Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2019 - 6

TECHNICAL
INNOVATIONS

SAE INTERNATIONAL
BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MANUFACTURING

MELD exploits plastic deformation of metals with
non-melt AM process
The MELD additive
manufacturing
process leverages
the plastic deformity
of materials without
having to melt and
alter them.

Paul Mascarenas, OBE
President
Mircea Gradu, PhD
2018 President
Todd Zarfos
2020 President Elect
Pascal Joly
Vice President - Aerospace
Ken Washington, PhD
Vice President - Automotive
Landon Sproull
Vice President -
Commercial Vehicle

6 April 2019

for fabrication. This can be key to the increased
use of additive manufacturing in the heavyduty vehicle market due to the sizeable scale
of parts needed during product development.
Another advantage is the ability to work
with a wider variety of metals than ever before. The MELD machines are capable of working with the standard array of aluminum and
steel alloys as well as stronger metals like titanium and nickel alloys. There are also new possibilities to work in multi-metal environments
or with non-weldable metals. Incorporating
aluminum onto steel or magnesium is possible. However, the MELD process is still subject
to physics-level material limitations, like forming steel onto aluminum.
An additional advantage of not melting the
materials during the manufacturing process is
the ability to retain the physical properties of
that material. Grain structures can be optimized to ensure proper strength attributes are
retained since hardness can be reduced by 10%
or more through the melting process. Other
issues found in melting processes like hot

An advantage to the MELD
process is the ability to work
in an open-air environment,
allowing production of
larger-scale parts.

Pierre Alegre
Treasurer
David L. Schutt, PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Gregory L. Bradley, Esq.
Secretary
Donald Nilson
Jeff Varick
Rhonda Walthall
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TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING

BOTH IMAGES: MELD MANUFACTURING

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been a catalyst in improving speed and efficiency during
the product development process. However,
the technology has been limited in the size and
materials available to be produced. MELD
Manufacturing believes it has the remedy for
these limitations, and it has garnered numerous
accolades for its patented MELD process, including the 2018 "Create the Future" award in
the Robotics/Automation/Manufacturing category. The design contest is produced by Tech
Briefs Media Group.
While additive manufacturing has thus far
relied on melting materials to produce custom
components, the MELD process does not require taking metals up to their melting
points. Instead, materials are brought to their
plastic deformation state and then formed into
the desired shape. By not melting the materials, MELD believes it is taking additive manufacturing beyond just an evolutionary step.
"I think this is revolutionary," Chase Cox,
Director of Technology at MELD Manufacturing,
told Truck and Off-Highway Engineering. "We're
not doing any melting at all.  We're exploiting
the plastic deformation of the metal in a very
similar manner to friction stir welding. The revolutionary part is that it frees you up from the
restrictions of the melt-based processes."
Through 12 years of research, MELD has realized several advantages that the company is
leveraging through this process. First, the manufactured component can be produced in an
open-air environment, which allows for a dramatic increase in the size of component created as there is no vacuum chamber required
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Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2019

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