At Penn State University, a “digital foundry” is currently being built in which conventional metal casting will be systematically combined with additive manufacturing. A team led by Guha Manogharan, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is receiving 1.5 million US dollars from the America Makes program and the IMPACT 3.0 consortium; in total, the project is funded with 4.5 million US dollars. The goal is to develop cast components for machines and vehicles more efficiently and transparently while at the same time strengthening the struggling foundry landscape in the United States.
“The system we will develop at Penn State will serve as a pilot system for future foundries,” Craig Dubler, director of facilities for the College of Engineering and project collaborator, said. “The goal is to eventually demonstrate and implement this digital twin foundry technology in commercial foundries around the country.”
At the core of the approach is the Digi-FOCUS system, a combination of a physical foundry and a digital twin. In the virtual counterpart, simulation and analysis systems run that access real-time data from production. Sensors record, for example, process parameters, metal temperature or melt flow velocities, while adaptive robotics takes over inspection and handling tasks.
Digi-FOCUS is intended to cover various 3D printing processes, including sand, ceramic, polymer, wax and foam printing for molds and patterns, as well as different metal alloys. According to Robert Voigt, such a tightly coupled combination of casting, additive manufacturing, simulation and robotics on this scale – the system is planned to cover around 400 square meters – has not yet been realized.
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