Annual LIA workshop on laser additive manufacturing heads to Orlando
Orlando, FL - The Laser Institute of America (LIA)'s annual Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM) Workshop will move to Orlando in 2015, and is scheduled to take place March 4-5.
Related: LAM 2014 draws record attendance, highlights promising developments
Chaired by Dr. Ingomar Kelbassa, the seventh LAM Workshop will focus not only on traditional laser-based cladding applications to prevent or repair corrosion and wear, but also on the process chains vital to optimizing the additive production of parts.
While rapid prototyping with plastic or metal powders is well established, Kelbassa is among those on the cutting edge of additively producing functional industrial parts. The adjunct professor at Australia’s RMIT University, vice director at the Chair for Laser Technology LLT, RWTH Aachen University, and department head at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology, Kelbassa was also a member of the Fraunhofer ILT team that won an Aviation Week innovation award in 2012 for producing an additively manufactured blade-integrated disk (BLISK) in about 160 minutes—about two minutes per blade.
“Primarily, LAM was, is, and will be a workshop that is industry-driven,” Kelbassa asserts. “Therefore, the majority of the presentations will be on success stories from OEMs as well as from a service provider's perspective—highlighting industrially implemented additive manufacturing (AM) chains in the aeronautics, power generation, offshore, mining, oil, automotive, and tool, die, and mold-making fields.”
In keeping with prior LAM education tracks, LAM 2015 will feature an overarching theme each day: process chain and process integration on day one, and real-world success stories on day two.
Day one is scheduled to feature four sessions with three presentations each addressing the paradigm shift in manufacturing—along the horizontal and vertical AM process chain; design and material; process and quality assurance; and systems and process integration. Day two “will feature a more industrially driven telling of success stories in different markets and fields of applications.” Kelbassa calls the last slate of presentations “visions, because hopefully (we will have a talk) on rapid manufacture of organic materials: not metals or ceramics, but depositing living cells. In the end, the vision is to print out ‘spare parts’ for human beings.”
LIA will ensure a chance to network by scheduling an exhibitor reception starting at 5 p.m. on March 4. Attendees can ask their most pressing questions of some of the most experienced laser-industry professionals, including LAM co-chairs Jim Sears of GE and Paul Denney of Lincoln Electric—both past chairs of LAM.
For more information, please visit www.lia.org/lam.