Hybrid Manufacturing of 3D Printed Continuous Fiber Composites Using Washout Tooling

This presentation covers Integrated printing and matching of water-soluble support tooling for high-performance thermoplastic part manufacturing. Electroimpact, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Oak Ridge National Labs worked together to develop a 3D printable, machinable water-soluble tooling.
This washout material is used as support and tooling in the Scalable Composites Robot Additive Manufacturing (SCRAM) cell. SCRAM uses multiple print and machining heads to make high-performance integrated composite parts. The SCRAM cell uses a combination of Pellet Extrusion, FFF, AFP, and NC machining operations, all in the same factory in the cell to make parts.