Additive Manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing (AM), considered to be the next frontier in manufacturing, is advancing in the areas small-scale manufacturing for repair and maintenance areas as well as early stage product development like design and prototyping. Advantages of AM compared to traditional methods such as casting, forging and machining is the use of less materials, combination of materials and flexibility of design leading to better utilize materials. Some of the known technologies are laser-based powder bed fusion, sintering, polymer extrusion, etc. Typical materials used are metallic and polymer alloys as well as polymer composites. Many metallic and polymer AM technologies use powders as the feed stock, while some polymer AM technologies are based on extruded fibers. Regardless of material type, certain critical properties including powder chemistry, particle size, particle morphology and flowability are required to produce dense products with acceptable surface characteristics, mechanical properties and corrosion resistance.

Touchstone Testing Lab has capability to run tests to qualify powder samples for AM. We also have capability to run tests on consolidated materials either in sample scale or component scale under normal and extreme environments to develop design and performance data. We also have capability to run some nondestructive testing like CATSCAN in collaboration with our network. Further, we have capability to develop custom testing to suit the requirement of the applications. We are fully certified by A2LA for ISO 17025, Nadcap – Metallic testing and Nadcap – Nonmetallic testing.

We work closely with customers in various program phases including material R&D, product qualification, prototyping and failure analysis. We also offer lot release testing through a dedicated laboratory located close to our customers, when required.

We have capability run tests on the following materials:

• Metallic materials like aluminum, titanium, steels (carbon and alloy) and high temperature materials such as nickel, chromium, niobium, molybdenum and tungsten-based alloys.
• Nonmetallic materials including ceramics, intermetallic alloys, laminates and composites based on inorganic fiber like carbon and glass fibers, as well as organic fibers such as Kevlar, nylon and PLA.

We offer the following services:

Mechanical Testing, Corrosion Evaluation, Material Characterization, Failure Analysis, Machining and Fabrication