Innovating with Additive Manufacturing in Quantum Technologies - Metamporphic - CDFAM
okay so first of all I'd like to thank Duann for organizing this fantastic event it's been a a great uh couple of days for both Lawrence uh and and myself lots of exciting uh presentations uh today I really enjoyed actually the presentations from our colleagues in architecture I think there's a lot to learn from these guys uh they've really nailed it uh when it comes to datadriven uh design um so my name is Manolis and I'm the co-founder together with Lawrence Co at the back of metamorphic uh we are a design engineering consultancy that specializes in ad manufacturing uh and what we do we help organizations navigate the complexity of ID manufacturing uh and um uh make the most of the um design freedom that it has to to offer and we combine expertise in design for am which I approach from a computational design perspective while Lawrence uh kind of grounds these crazy designs with multi physics simulation and more traditional engineering design um so we specialize in early stage uh R&D projects uh we operate as a flexible R&D resource that suits our clients or Partners uh needs uh and we typically um help um evolve or develop uh uh ideas that might be coming from fundamental research uh into rough working prototypes that can be tested in their intended environment or lab setting so we bridge in a way we help kind of organizations cross this uh so-called Valley of Death where uh ideas uh are tested and sometimes they fail uh so yeah that's us um we founded metamorphic about 2 and a half years ago uh after having worked in the AM industry uh in for a number of years and the aim the mission uh the motivation was to uh is to elevate uh defam uh and um make the and help also um um in the adoption of ative manufacturing um in in a wide range of Industries because um there's been fantastic developments in terms of materials and process in am over the last few decades but in the end what matters is what you actually make with this technology uh so uh we have a growing project portfolio in a Range uh of uh industry sectors we have focused uh primarily on emerging technology sectors uh such as uh nuclear fusion and and Quantum sensing um because they they face major technical uh challenges that usually require multidisciplinary teams to come together and and solve these challenges so that the um technology can become commercially viable however we are equally pursuing opportunities uh in established areas where there's usually a drive to uh improve efficiencies so I'll give you a few a few examples here uh in uh the area of uh uh nuclear fusion uh we're working together with we have this ongoing project with the University of Birmingham in tokomak energy we're looking into new design and Manufacturing methods for Pure uh tungsten uh components we have a s a sample actually uh at the back um these can withstand extremely high heat fluxes um in Quantum sensing this is the project uh Q team that I'll be talking about uh today uh in telecoms uh together with u a long list of Partners so BT uh the University of Birmingham uh M squ Helia photonics and 3T we've been developing uh additively manufactured lightweight Optical cavities that can be used as uh frequency reference es for timing and that has loads of applications in telecoms in 5G and Beyond in uh wearables and kind of this is touching also on medical devices Medical Imaging um we have um designed this Magneto craphy helmet for circum magnetics uh that holds Quantum sensors uh in known locations uh and measures very small changes in the magnetic field caused by uh current that flows in different parts of the brain as they become activated now typical me systems are huge they weigh they're the size of an MRI uh they weigh over a ton and what CA have done they managed to uh bring um bring all this uh uh functionality into uh a helmet and that allows uh scientists to scan uh subjects while they uh move and this also allows to scan children children of course who uh tend to move a lot uh um down to the age of uh two years old uh in chemical and uh and uh engineering and bioprocessing we're actively pursuing uh opportunities to innovate in this area with various Partners we believe there's a huge potential for artive manufacturing uh in this uh field so if you have any ideas in this space or any other uh please come and talk to us so today I'll talk to you about project Q team which is a collaboration between uh us uh Ral space which is the UK's um uh space uh lab uh the University of uh Nottingham uh specifically the school of uh uh physics and astronomy and a t scientific uh company that specializes in ultra high vacuum components and also instrumentation uh components uh based in the UK so the the uh the project was partially funded by innovate UK which is the UK's Innovation agency and the the aim was to provide uh alternative methods for Designing and Manufacturing uh components for the quantum sector that can improve um the swap characteristics of quantum devices that is their size weight and power consumption uh and uh contribute uh this way uh towards this transition uh into more portable devices that can be used out in the field or in space um so our Focus as Mr morphic uh was um on the ultra high vacuum chambers that are at the heart of these systems this is where all the magic takes place um in this case uh um the we've we designed this chamber for a Quantum gravimeter that measures gravity um and um the term ultra high vacuum uh refers to vacuums below 10us 6 Pascal um and to help you kind of visualize it uh that means that you you know um you've basically extracted uh most of the atoms uh inside this chamber and maybe the few that remain the possibility of them colliding with each other is so small that they would have to travel several kilometers before that happens that's how low the possibility is um so one of the main objectives was to prove that am is able to deliver bespoke a highly functional components for these really stringent that meet these really stringent requirements of the Quant industry and also this way kind of establish help establish a UK based additive manufacturing supply chain for the emerging uh Quantum sector so ultra high vacuum Chambers are typically machined out of Billet uh materials and this poses limitations as you can imagine to their size and weight now in addition to the waste that is generated uh through the Machining process uh there is also um a lot of excess material as you can see uh in these Chambers this is actually so we based our design Q team is based on this um Quantum gravimeter um that was uh developed for the European Space Agency uh it was a collaborative project between Ral space the University of Hanover the University of Birmingham uh and DLR uh and you can see that there's a lot of excess material in these components it doesn't serve any particular function it's just the result of the manufacturing process itself we are surrounded by objects that have been shaped one way or another by the manufacturing process while kind of trying to balance Aesthetics function um performance usability and cost of course um in this case however um these ultra high vacuum Chambers um they they haven't changed for more than three decades uh and the reason for this is because they've been uh mainly used in Labs um so the focus has been on proving the physics but as they find applications out in the real world there is this um uh drive to actually reduce their weight and miniaturize them um again this is another thing that is linked to the conventional uh to these limitations imposed by conventional manufacturing techniques you can see that they consist of multiple Parts uh and this increases uh the the risk of leakage because of multiple the presence of multiple joints but there are also limitations imposed by conventional CAD tools uh so these are highly complex systems they are really challeng alling to design um determining the optimum diameters and locations of the ports uh usually involves uh going through several iterations um they the physicists have to run simulations uh for the Optics the lasers uh the magnetic uh uh fields and they could really benefit uh so you if you make a small change basically in one of the the ports it can impact the entire assembly so they can really benefit from tools that are more responsive more Dynamic tools that allow them to uh easily visualize uh all these different scenarios and help them this way trade faster um and this is where a manufacturing computational design come into play so Q team was really born out of this uh question uh what would Quantum devices look like if physicists were given More Design Freedom uh and um and what are the opportunities for innovation in this space using ative manufacturing can we design these uh uh systems so that we get the best performance of the physics package out of it um so an important part of every multidisciplinary project is the knowledge exchange that happens uh at the start um this is where when uh requirements are gathered uh and when the team kind of uh tries to kind of identify areas that can benefit from design for am uh So within a short uh period of time with the help of our partners we had to really build an understanding of uh called atom interferometry uh and also uh magnetooptical trapping that basically means means using a combination of lasers uh and magnetic fields uh that have specific shapes and gradients to trap and slow down atoms so that these can be observed uh and also we went through the typical process that they follow when they designed these complex systems and how they assemble them as well and at the same time we um demonstrated examples of previous work also we went through some of the most common kind of techniques used in computational design like field driven design uh form Finding Etc to get them thinking really about the possibilities and also we covered aspects of Meto am including considerations for postprocessing and machining and and it's through this Fusion really of these two very disparate Fields uh that you get lots of ideas bouncing around so you might physicists asking you know we had this idea a while ago about combining these two things uh and uh maybe wrapping them around this surface do you think this might be possible and of course you know sometimes the answer is no because am has its limitations but there are cases when where it is possible so long as you know some compromises are made for example you know sometimes they have to relax some of the requirements um so and this is when things I think get really interesting for us so in this project uh are go into the technical details a bit so uh we we followed a hybrid approach we have a computational design script developed in uh uh grasshopper for Rhino and this script generates the chambers it has access to a library of uh Parts mechanical interfaces ports that have been designed using Trad additional C tools so um the user starts from defining as you can see on the top uh uh left uh from defining uh the optical paths and the corresponding Port diameters and the script calculates uh the optimal packing density of these ports so the best arrangement of these ports so that they don't they don't intersect with each other while at the same time ensuring that uh we have the minimum uh uh volume uh in of the resulting chamber so this is done through um uh solving intersection events between cylinders that that whose diameters correspond to the external diameters of the ports and then uh the bullan union based on these calculations the bullan union of these cylinders is trimmed and this uh the resulting geometry can be can be U the mesh can be reparameterized uh and uh through constrained mesh relaxation you can get a nice kind of external surface similar process followed for the we follow for the uh the uh internal surface uh in this case however the cylinders correspond to the actual ports the the diameters of the ports uh and this can be also kind of combined with a minimal surface to kind of minimize the internal uh the surface area of the internal cavity um so um the first step was really to build a robust algorithm uh that allows the team allowed the team to explore hundreds of design variations um with very minimal input um so the algorith them generates a nice watertight geometry of an ultra high vacuum chamber and that corresponds also gives us the minimum volume for any given combination of ports and once you have that you can actually uh have um an assembly uh of Chambers here defined as nodes as you can see on the top left and you follow uh you can the user can specify the relative orientation and position of of these uh uh Chambers in relation to each other and following the same approach you can actually get a nice Consolidated assembly that can be used for uh the the uh operations that uh uh that follow in this workflow so at the same time we lightweighted uh a lot of these uh interfaces um um so you can see um here I don't know if you can see my no you can't so you can see one of the first uh um um iterations of the the chamber um where basically we have all the ports populated uh around it and um the script essentially picks and places uh each port in the the defined uh location and this is um uh joined uh these ports are joined with a two mm thick uh skin a lot of these ports uh eventually uh could be replaced with brazed Windows and this could also result in further reductions in in weight however scientists they want to be able to assemble and disassemble the system they want to be able to mount different different peripherals different components uh detectors and things onto these ports so uh we we um uh we we stuck to uh this kind of uh uh approach and on the far right you can see uh a cross-section of the the chamber and you will notice there is this narrow tube connecting the uh upper section which is the 2D magnetooptical trap uh with a bottom section which is the 3D Magneto Optical trap and that uh previously these two sections had to be manufactured separately uh because there's no way of accessing uh this uh middle section with a drill bit however with manufacturing this can be built uh as one monolithic object and that also um uh helps reduce uh the the possibility of uh of leaks so so um um so now um this slide shows you the workflow that we um follow uh for generating the uh the external ltis which serves a dual purpose so it provides mechanical strength by connecting all these different ports uh and at the same time it's also the support structure used for printing so after after the individual sections have been of the chamber have been merged and smooth the mesh that corresponds to the external surface is reparameterized um and the nodes of this mesh are then used um for generating a network of lines um which is then filtered based on uh so the user defines the printing uh Direction and any lines that uh uh fall between 0 and 45° are uh removed um and from there um we have also um the script also um identifies all the overhanging features uh so we have all the ports basically populated uh and without the feature uh uh that are machined uh and uh by defining again the printing direction we can uh the script identifies all the overhanging features and draws lines draws members between these features and the um um ribs as you can see these are the lines from the the original Network extruded inwards um draws so it draws members between these uh overhanging features and the closest uh ribs and uh the user can specify the thickness of these members and also the thickness of the ribs which can also be varied locally and through a series of uh Boolean operations you get uh uh a nice um uhv chamber geometry but we're not done yet um so uh these cold atom experiments to be able to work uh they need um they require magnetic fields with specific shapes and gradients uh this is for um to essentially to be able to trap the atoms effectively uh and um naum uni um what they did they went through a series of uh optimizations and they managed to determine the optimal uh size and location of these coils in relation to the atom cloud in the center of the chamber and um also the number of turns so we had to basically trim the lattice so that we can fit uh these uh these coils and by bringing them as close as possible to the chamber um the nice thing about it is that uh you can reduce power consumption in these systems so um finally the part that I'd say most people avoid talking about uh is uh Machining uh because uh most additively manufactured Parts they need to be machined uh in order to I guess meet the the uh manufacturing uh tolerances for assembly so uh our script generates uh an STL and pleas one don't get too mad at us um that uh corresponds to so that that's essentially on the far left the part that we sent for printing then um another STL which corresponds to the as Machin and by overlapping them you can actually see uh which features are going to be machined away and this is very uh helpful for actually planning the Machining operations however we still need to produce technical drawings uh for uh the workshop and for this reason we also uh output a BP uh which is a um a lightweight let's say a um a light representation of the chamber without the external uh lce structure and this is a very time like creating these drawings is a very time consuming process so if anyone has Solutions in this space uh we'd love to hear about it so uh the verdict um we achieved uh in compar to the original system designed for uh the European Space Agency we achieved U approximately 50% Mass reduction and uh in our opinion a design that better suits um the next generation of ultra high vacuum of well of um a portable um um Quantum systems uh the machines were um printed in titanium uh 64 using uh laser padle bed Fusion uh you can imagine the Machining was not easy uh the chamber had uh I think almost 120 bolt holes um the print Bureau which is a well established uh Bureau in the UK they've got like more than 30 years of uh of experience they said that this is one of the most complicated Parts they've ever had to uh manufacture they had to plan the the uh sequence of Machining operations uh very carefully and the Chamber is currently being tested at Rous space um so early results suggest um a range of so a helium leak rate in the range of uh 10- 10 m l/s which is in in line basically with most ultra high vacuum components however more testing uh needs to be done in the months that follow um the system basically needs to be baked down so that uh any trapped uh atoms uh are removed um and then it needs to be pumped down which can take a number of weeks um to uh reach a safe conclusion about its performance um so I think uh Q team uh demonstrates very effectively uh how uh computational design uh combined with our manufacturing can really help teams approach technical challenges uh differently and this uh unlocks opportunities for Innovation uh in uh a whole range of both established and emerging technology sectors uh project Q team was just a start it laid the foundations for the design of and manufacturing of lightweight volumetrically optimized uh ultra high vacuum Chambers uh since uh so the project finished uh a few months ago since then we've managed to secure more funding uh to continue the development uh and also make our computational design scripts uh more intelligent uh and finally we applied to TCT Awards uh with this design uh under the Aerospace and defense category uh and I'm delighted to share with everyone uh that we've been shortlisted alongside Boeing Airbus and Mark forged uh so yeah that's all for me uh please don't hesitate to get in touch if you want to find out more about us how we work if you want to work with us thank you very much everyone this is okay I'm going to give you the the CDFAM award here hey this is the CDFAM Award for best best design thank you thank you right oh yeah
2024-05-24 09:06
