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A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 68F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 41F. Winds light and variable.

Idaho National Laboratory electric field assisted sintering Senior Scientist Jorgen Rufner speaks to the crowd gathered at lab’s DCS-800 demonstration last Wednesday. The DCS-800 is located at the lab’s Energy Systems Laboratory in Idaho Falls.

Idaho National Laboratory electric field assisted sintering Senior Scientist Jorgen Rufner speaks to the crowd gathered at lab’s DCS-800 demonstration last Wednesday. The DCS-800 is located at the lab’s Energy Systems Laboratory in Idaho Falls.

Idaho National Laboratory unveiled a new technology last Wednesday that will improve the manufacturing process of advanced materials made of metals and ceramics on an industrial scale.

INL held a ribbon cutting ceremony for its electric field assistance sintering machine, also known as the direct current sintering system-800 (DCS-800) in the Energy Systems Laboratory in Idaho Falls.

Sintering converts loose fine metallic or ceramic particles into a solid, coherent mass using heat and pressure without fully melting the particles. The DCS-800 is the largest machine of its kind in the world and will help develop new materials more efficiently and at an industry scale, according to an INL information pamphlet.

Jorgen Rufner, the lab’s electric field assisted sintering senior scientist, said sintering has been researched for decades in academia on a much smaller scale, typically creating parts less than one-inch wide. INL’s machine is capable of generating parts nearly half a meter in size, according to the information pamphlet.

“This is the first system of its size that’s been built anywhere in the world and it allows folks to take what they’ve been learning on the small scale and actually learn how to scale them up to a part they can use,” Rufner said.

And companies are already interested in using the DCS-800. Rufner said Carbon Silicon Carbide Technologies, an American based company that specializes in making ceramic composites for aerospace, defense, commercial vehicles and automotive industries, created a 16-inch diameter brake rotor part of its own design last week.

“(Carbon SiC) identified this technology was the only thing that they were able to use to make the part that they needed,” Rufner said. “They’ve been working on it for four years and they’ve tried other types of power-processing techniques. (Electric field assistance sintering) was the first one that really gave them what they wanted.”

Clifford Leonard, CEO of Carbon SiC, attended the INL showcase. He said using the DCS-800 results in an “astronomically lower” cost to produce the brake rotor part the company designed, which it’s advertising as an affordable brake rotor for the U.S. military.

Carbon SiC calculated the brake rotor part produced by the DCS-800 results in much better fuel economy for vehicles that use it, Leonard said. Additionally, he mentioned the brake rotor is much lighter than steel brakes that freight vehicles use in the U.S., which weigh about 80 pounds each. The DCS-800 produced brake rotor part weighs about 20 pounds.

“(Freight vehicles) have maximum loads … That’s a big deal because less freight is less money and the impact per truck is about $200,000 a year of freight revenue so you can imagine how this affects a company like UPS,” Leonard said. “(With the new brake rotor), not only are you gaining back all that money, you’re gaining a lot more money that you can carry in addition to it lasting four times longer.”

Electric field assisted sintering also is much more energy efficient than other sintering methods. Rufner said energy savings can exceed 90% using the DCS-800.

One sintering method known as hot pressing, would result in $5.7 million in cost to produce 5,000 parts and use 1.83 kilowatts per gram, according to INL. The DCS-800 can produce 5,000 parts for $520,000 and use 0.1 kilowatts per gram.

Hot pressing subjects advanced materials manufactured from powder poured into a die to high pressure and heat of about 221 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a 2017 research article published by Progress in Materials Science.

“The dollar savings can be translated to a carbon footprint savings,” Rufner said. “That energy has to be generated somewhere to run the system and because we’re able to run the system much quicker and make samples in a reduced time, it translates to saving kilograms of carbon in the same vein as saving money or power.”

Ammon Mayor Sean Coletti also attended the showcase and said INL is an asset for the eastern Idaho community and its workforce.

“I am constantly amazed at the ingenuity and impact that the INL has not only here locally, but around the world,” Coletti said. “This DCS-800 and other (electric field assisted sintering equipment) is just another example of the INL again leading the way in technology to make the world better and safer.”

Originally published on postregister.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.

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