ORNL Continues Research Into Making Large Format Metal Parts by Combining AM and HIP

• This can’t be stressed enough: the US needs to secure its supply chains for energy and power generation components. And, while the US needs to prioritize that objective across the...

This can’t be stressed enough: the US needs to secure its supply chains for energy and power generation components. And, while the US needs to prioritize that objective across the board, the current greatest risk of shortage arguably lies with large format, metal parts. There are few American organizations doing more to address this issue than Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Moreover, ORNL is approaching the problem from a variety of different angles, exploring a broad range of advanced manufacturing techniques both individually and in concert with one another. Two years ago, for instance, the Knoxville-based institution announced it was developing a method to use wire-arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) to produce large vessels that could be used for powder metallurgical hot isostati