Cold Spray AM of Pressure Vessel

HAMR has demonstrated that the cold spray additive manufacturing process can be used to fabricate pressure vessels through a successful high pressure cyclic test of one our Al6061 components!

During this development, Finite Element Analysis (FEM) was used to predict the mechanical performance of the vessel while pressurized. This was done prior to fabrication and again on the 3D-scan of the as-printed product. This gave confidence prior to testing.

This component was presented at the Cold Spray Action Team conference in 2023 and recently passed pressure testing. This paves the way for production of pressure vessels for undersea, space, and industrial applications using an economical large format printing process via SPEE3D's WarpSPEE3D system.

A special thanks to The Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State University for assistance on this project.

This was originally posted on LinkedIn.

Aluminum Pressure Vessel

Aluminum (A96061) pressure vessel after being machined, shown with pressure caps for sealing the vessel for testing.