FAQs

Q: 2.2 Could you talk about your patent and your next step?
Answer: We have two patent registrations in US & China already with additional ones in preparation. AFAM is still new and we are exploring the application and partnership opportunities. The concept of AFAM technology is that it could make traditional machine to have additive capability in better (output quality) and cheaper (cost) way. It provides many innovation possibilities in the industrial chain of light alloy – from material manufacturing to industry parts and applications. We would like to share these possibilities with our partners and organizations to form strategic relationship advancing the concept and development of AFAM standard.

Q: 2.3 Friction Additive Manufacture is an International Challenge, why do you could break down and built an AFAM system?
Answer: It has been proved that key person is very important by endless cases especially the innovation of new technology, from Windows to iPhone, regardless of the size of the company. The key person in our team who developed his first CAD/CAM system based on PC thirty years ago, he has been thinking about this question for years – how to merge material in machining process. After long time technology exploration, thinking, experiment and precipitation, he found the right project and met the right person who provided platform to test FSW AM. The collide of AM and FSW led us explore the concept of AFAM, we then did a lot of experiments to finally find success from a theoretical concept to industry application. Before the first success with industry metal part, who would’ve thought that a few specialists in an innovation company would hold the key to unlock such a hard problem — all started by one guy with an AFAM tool and an idea in a shop.

3. AFAM Additive Tools

Q: 3.1 What is AFAM tool? How many types they have?
Answer: AFAM tool is a type of additive process tool tip like milling cutter, which can be fixed on milling or special FSW machine, so part of additive function could be append these machine immediately. There are two type of AFAM tools now, analog (type I) and digital (type II developing…). This is first friction AM tool tip in the world now.

Q: 3.2 Is AFAM tool a standard part? Where can I buy it?
Answer: No, it isn’t. It is a new tool and AFAM standard is implemented on it. It is patented product and could be bought online in near future.

Q: 3.3 Is DIY AFAM possible without any additive process experiences?
Answer: Yes, you could. Firstly you should have some FSW experience and have AFAM tool at least, second you should be an experienced machine operator, and third download our online training A-level guide which you could read and act on it step by step carefully, you could 3D pint out your first friction sample.

4. AFAM Additive Structure

Q: 4.1 AFAM logic structure of diagram is fairly simple, could you tell us its meaning and value?
Answer: OK, AFAM is an AM system, their structure is only part of it. The logical drawing is shown to the public but the real application can be very complex depending on your application. We want to get semi-solid state of alloy in the AM process in better and cheaper way, this is very difficult. After we simplified FSW factor – stir, this goal was achieved. There are side-additive and top-additive modes in AFAM, which are corresponding two milling mode-vertical milling and horizontal in traditional machinery process. Inspect of each mode has its limit but you could produce many type of parts after using accessories similar to the subtraction machinery process. You could gain the research and design capability of solid/semi-solid additive formation immediately, after adding our AFAM tool at your machine following our guidance.
The important value of AFAM is combining advanced material with mature mechanical process! This is the future of mechanical process，and based on additive mechanism researching and engineering application for the S/SSFAM.

Q: 4.2 How many forging methods in AFAM structure and what are their usage?
Answer: There are two types of forging mechanisms in AFAM, micro forging and hammer forging, micro forging is set up for solid solution and hammer forging is set up for deformation strengthening.

Q: 4.3 The feeding system is tricky in the AM process based on FSW concept, how is that being solved in AFAM?
Answer: OK, we have designed three feeding systems in AFAM structure, forcing feeding, decompressing feeding and dynamic balance feeding. Our online training level A (AFAM-open) has training materials for dynamic balance feeding system.

5. AFAM Process

Q: 5.1 How does AFAM fused advanced material and mechanical process? What types of process does it include?
Answer: We have primarily focused on light alloy such as aluminum alloy in AFAM system. It is working in semi-solid state like FSW, and thus avoided defects that come with melting the materials. It is one of few semi-solid producing methods. We could complete additive manufacturing use AFAM equipment on traditional machine such as FSW or milling device, at least one AFAM tool should be attached to your machine. Part samples can be print out with this platform, so you could do additive manufacture test and research immediately by controlling parameters such as main spindle rotating speed, additive speed, press amount and feeding rate etc.

Q: 5.2 How to use AFAM’s composite strengthening model and control its process?
Answer: AFAM’s composite strengthening model is shown through AFAM integrated process model, it is based on friction intensive grain refining, friction intensive micro-forging solid solution and friction intensive hammer forging deformation.

Q: 5.3 Could you tell us what are the parameters in these strengthening mechanisms? How to decide the optimization value?
Answer: There are four type of controlling items: main spindle rotating speed, additive speed, press amount and feeding rate in AFAM’s friction intensive grain refining and micro-forging solid solution. In addition, there is amount of deformation in friction intensive hammer forging deformation. This is very important in the deformation strengthening. You could decide optimal values in your device test with material analysis. The additive quality of your sample or part depends on these values closely.

Q: 5.4 What are the requirements to the material used in AFAM process?
Answer: The AFAM generally is targeted towards the light alloys. There is no requirement for non-heat treatable reinforced alloys. The material state of the heat treatable reinforced alloy is required to be toughened or softened because the AFAM additive process embeds the mechanism of intensive solid solution.

6. AFAM Additive Mechanism

Q: 6.1 What are the similarities and differences between AFAM and FSW?
Answer: Friction Mechanical-heat mechanisms are used by both AFAM and FSW, including three factors: squeezing, friction and stir in FSW. However, only two important factors are needed in AM: squeezing and friction, stir is redundant or additional factor. These points can be found in our pre-researching of AFAM. This is where the difference is, it has been confirmed by our recent experiments.

Q: 6.2 What is the composited strengthening model of AFAM?
Answer: AFAM’s composited strengthening model is based on grain refine, it can be described by mathematical models along three dimensions which is consisted of grain refine strengthening, deformation strengthening and heat treatment strengthening. Integrated additive manufacturing is AFAM’s process controlling model.

Q: 6.3 Could you tell us what is AFAM’s heat-generating model?
Answer: Yes, the working condition of H Schmidt’s model[1] is very similar to our AFAM, which was used for reference by us. For AFAM-tool-I-100X20X20-side tip type, set Q2=Q4; For AFAM-tool-I-100X20X20X6-side-top tip type, plus Q4. To see in Fig. 2