J. William Boley

Automating and Integrating Additive Manufacturing of Nanoengineered Materials

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Additive Assembly Lab at Boston University focuses on understanding and harnessing the relationships between materials synthesis, assembly process, and multi-scale architecture in additive manufacturing (AM) to create new functional materials and devices. Current projects in the group employ different additive manufacturing techniques to pattern various nano-engineered materials, such as highly heterogeneous carbon nano-composites, inkjet printed multi-layered thin film organic and inorganic structures, and materials comprised of two dimensional metal oxides. Applications of these materials include high performance 4D printed multifunctional structures, printed electronics and optics, and soft electronics and robotics.

Although several of these processes have automated tasks, the programs written for our printing system have limited control over printed feature fidelity, lack the ability to employ automated inkjet printing, and are not capable of automatically integrating all printing techniques used in our group. To address the current limitations of our printing system, this project will focus on developing software tools to further automate existing printing techniques for high fidelity printed architectures, add inkjet printing capabilities, and integrate all printing techniques onto a single platform.

LABORATORY MENTOR
Ramon Sanchez

RESEARCH GOALS
– Develop new software tools to improve 3D printed feature fidelity of existing printing techniques, enable inkjet printing capability, and integrate all automated processes on our lab’s printing platform.
– Develop new program functions, subroutines, and algorithms, and the implement communication protocols in the open source Python library that our research group uses to design our print routines.
– Test these new software tools on our various printing techniques and assess for performance and level of improvement.

LEARNING GOALS
– Learn to use the open source Python library that our research group uses to design our print routines.
– Learn the specific Gcode commands of the printing system that are necessary for the project.
– Work with all group members to learn the details of current programs, materials, and processes for printing technologies to be improved, added, and integrated.

Learn more about Assistant Professor Boley on his faculty page.