Four University students from the Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering (DIME) presented their studies in a special Session on Additive Manufacturing at the 16th International Conference on Advanced Computational Engineering and Experimenting (ACEX) Conference held in Heraklion, Greece, from 3-7 July 2023.
The first of the students, Ms Sarah Delia, presented her work on factors affecting interface bonding in multi-material additive manufacturing. Mr Albert Curmi, a Research Support Officer on the MALTI3D project, showed the capability of a Fused Granulate Fabrication (FGF) 3D printer to produce rapid tooling inserts using a high-performance polymer (PEI). The development of the FGF 3D printer is part of the MALTI3D project funded the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) through Fusion R&I Technology Development Programme (Project R&I 2018-009-T). Mr Jeremy Farrugia presented his research results from the MICORE project, a project he has been working upon as a Research Support Officer. This project combines 3D printing and microinjection moulding for the fabrication of polymer components with embedded miniature hollow internal features.
MICORE was funded by the MCST through the Research Excellence Programme (REP) 2022 and is coordinated by Dr Ing. Pierre Vella. Ms Rebecca Clark presented her research results on a comparative simulation study on sustainable injection moulding using 3D printed conformal cooling channels. Her project, CONFORM, was internally funded through the Transdisciplinary Research and Knowledge Exchange Centre (TRAKE) project and supported by CoreTech System Co. Ltd. by providing their melt flow simulation software Moldex3D.
Prof. Arif Rochman was not only a member of the scientific committee at this conference but was also an invited speaker. He presented part of the MALTI3D project results on interlayer crystallinity and shear bonding strength of FGF 3D printed polyetheretherketone (PEEK), which is a high-performance polymer and suitable for aerospace and medical applications.
Furthermore, Prof. Arif Rochman is the coordinator of the MALTI3D and CONFORM projects and is also a partner of the MICORE project.
