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While additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have revolutionized metal parts design complexity, the traditional laser beams could lead to defects and poor mechanical performance.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is exploring alternative shapes to the Gaussian beams commonly employed in high-power laser printing processes such as laser powder bed fusion (LBPF). In a paper published by Science Advances, researchers experimented with exotic optical beam shapes known as Bessel beams—reminiscent of bullseye patterns—which possess a number of unique properties such as self-healing and non-diffraction. They discovered that the application of these types of beams reduced the likelihood of pore formation and “keyholing,” a porosity-inducing phenomenon in LPBF exacerbated by the use of Gaussian beams.  

New car registrations by fuel type in August 2021, compared to August 2020 and 2019 (Courtesy JATO)

According to data from 26 European markets, electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids outsold diesel vehicles by 10,100 units in August, representing 21% of all cars sold in the month. Even with an increase in sales of EV’s and hybrids, new car registrations overall reported a decline of 18% to 713,714 units, marking the lowest recorded volume in August since 2014.

The 2021 Howard I. Sanderow Outstanding Technical Paper Award has been selected, and this year's winning paper is "Mix Solution for High Green-Strength and Green Machining" by Amber Tims, Roland Warzel, Bo Hu, North American Höganäs and Per Knutsson, Asa Ahlin, Angelica Hansen, Höganäs AB. The paper was selected from among the highly qualified manuscripts that were presented at the PowderMet2021 conference in Orlando and critically evaluated for the prestigious award.

The leading American technical conferences on powder metallurgy (PM) and metal additive manufacturing (AM) will be held June 12-15, 2022, at the Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon. 

It was another successful year for the PM Parts Compacting/Tooling Seminar. The seminar, held about every other year, dates to 1989 and continues to educate a variety of people throughout the industry, mainly catering to powder metallurgy parts and product fabricators.