Mazak MegaStir named tooling supplier for Meld Manufacturing

Mazak MegaStir has signed an agreement making it the exclusive supplier of tooling for Meld Manufacturing’s solid-deposition technology.

Mazak MegaStir will provide its hard metal expertise in friction stir welding (FSW) technology along with tooling specifically developed for the MELD process that also incorporates the use of friction as part of its solid deposition process.

Mazak MegaStir, according to Dale Fleck, general manager of Mazak MegaStir, can provide the complex tooling with the high-strength capability necessary to commercialize MELD’s solid deposition technology. The tooling is made from ultrahard materials such as PCBN and carbide and withstands the extremely high loads and forces necessary for the process.

Like Mazak MegaStir’s FSW process, solid deposition is also a solid way of joining, but as part of an additive process for the joining of stacked material layers to produce (build) structures. As these layers are deposited, the Mazak MegaStir tooling, operating with applied pressure and frictional load, spins and joins the layers together. The tooling mounts into deposition heads on CNC machine platforms with the ability to feed the metal material down through the center of the head and the tooling.

MELD Manufacturing is based in Christianburg, Virginia, and its MELD process is capable of printing large metal parts at a scale not yet achieved in the metal additive market. As a solid-state process, it can produce high-quality materials and parts with low residual stresses and full density with significantly lower energy requirements than more conventional fusion-based processes.

Because the MELD process occurs in the solid state, it also produces materials that are not susceptible to porosity, hot-cracking, or other common problems that plague melt-based technologies. MELD is a single-step process that does not require time-consuming follow-on processes such as hot isostatic pressing (HIP) or sintering to improve the quality of the deposited material.

Microprocessor-based controller dedicated to a machine tool that permits the creation or modification of parts. Programmed numerical control activates the machine’s servos and spindle drives and controls the various machining operations. See DNC, direct numerical control; NC, numerical control.

Rate of change of position of the tool as a whole, relative to the workpiece while cutting.

Cutting tool material consisting of polycrystalline cubic boron nitride with a metallic or ceramic binder. PCBN is available either as a tip brazed to a carbide insert carrier or as a solid insert. Primarily used for cutting hardened ferrous alloys.

Bonding of adjacent surfaces in a mass of particles by molecular or atomic attraction on heating at high temperatures below the melting temperature of any constituent in the material. Sintering strengthens and increases the density of a powder mass and recrystallizes powder metals.