Advanced Manufacturing Breakthroughs to "Solve the Big Problems" - Bill Peter, Director for Advanced Manufacturing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Ready to hear some of the most cutting-edge advancements in 3D printing, bio-materials and smart systems? 

Matt Kirchner sits down with Dr. Bill Peter, Director of Advanced Manufacturing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). From large-scale 3D printing to the use of bio-based materials, Dr. Peter is leading initiatives that are redefining the possibilities of manufacturing. He shares how ORNL is not just solving technical challenges but also reshaping the skills pipeline to meet the demands of tomorrow’s manufacturing jobs.

With a mission statement "solving the big problems," ORNL is exploring the convergence of technologies like machining, additive manufacturing, and smart systems. Discover how ORNL is addressing workforce gaps through cutting-edge training programs and collaborations with universities and industry leaders—all while bringing manufacturing innovations back to the U.S.

In this episode:

• How ORNL is 3D printing bio-based, locally sourced materials to construct entire homes
• The breakthrough that’s cutting waste in aerospace manufacturing from 90% to just 10%
• Why 3D-printed molds are slashing lead times for industries like boating and construction
• Using AI to spot defects & make adjustments in real-time during production
• How ORNL's partnerships are driving U.S. innovation in wind energy, machining, and carbon fiber

Quotable Moments:

"We’re trying to see where and how can we bring those [manufacturing components] back, making them affordable, while integrating smart manufacturing not just to large companies, but also small and medium enterprises."

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. Converging technologies are revolutionizing manufacturing: Advanced manufacturing is no longer about isolated processes. ORNL is pioneering the integration of machining, additive manufacturing, smart systems, and AI to create flexible, efficient production methods for everything from aircraft components to hydro dam turbines.
2. Sustainability meets innovation: ORNL’s work with bio-based and locally sourced materials is reshaping industries like construction and packaging. From 3D-printing entire homes to developing recyclable molds for industrial applications, the future of manufacturing is green, scalable, and efficient.
3. Preparing tomorrow’s workforce for multi-disciplinary roles: The next generation of manufacturing professionals will need to blend computational, hands-on, and problem-solving skills. Through programs like America's Cutting Edge and collaborations with institutions like the University of Maine, ORNL is setting a new standard for workforce development.

Resources in this Episode:

To learn more about Oak Ridge National Laboratory, visit: www.ornl.gov

More resources:

• ACE - America's Cutting Edge
• Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at ORNL
• University of Maine's Advanced Structure and Composites Center (ASCC)
• Strati - The 3D

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Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:00

Matt, welcome into The TechEd Podcast. I am your host. Matt Kirk, here, we have a wonderful episode in store for you this week, talking all about emerging technologies in advanced manufacturing as we reach the world of technical education as we reach the world of manufacturers who are doing innovative things in their space and putting those people together, I can think of no better individual to share some of the great things that are happening with regard to research, with regard to emerging technologies. Then Dr Bill Peter. Dr Peter is the director for advanced manufacturing at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Bill, it is awesome to have you with us. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. Thank you for having us and getting a chance to talk about some of the things we're currently doing and how it's having impact with workforce development, absolutely, and having that impact on workforce development we all know is so incredibly important, especially in this day and age when manufacturers are looking for incredible talent and not always finding it every place that they're looking. And so we've got these huge opportunities for young people and people of all ages to find great careers in advanced manufacturing. And I know you're doing just a tremendous amount of work in that space before we get into that work, I want to ask you this, and I know you've got an interesting background. You grew up all over the eastern United States. Tell us a little bit about how did you learn the craft of engineering. So

Bill Peter: 1:26

growing up, I actually had a huge interest in building and construction. My grandfather was in manufacturing, had run facilities in Mexico, in the Ohio area. That was one thing that had really perked my interest in the area. My dad had always been in business, and so I always had this sort of split scenario of, would I go into business, or would I go into engineering? I think I love problem solving, though, and I think that's really what drew me to the area. And one of the things to me that I in manufacturing, why it's drawn me that down that direction, is the fact everything we touch every day is made, and trying to understand how, how those things come to be. And so that that really led me down this, this pathway. You know, I

Matt Kirchner: 2:14

think a lot of times folks that maybe didn't spend their time growing up in and around manufacturing as you did, don't always have an appreciation for all the problem solving that takes place in manufacturing, all the fascinating, different career opportunities that they are in, also the opportunities to port from maybe other disciplines into manufacturing. So here you're somebody who is studying civil engineering. And when I when I think of civil engineering, you know, you think of urban infrastructure, you think of bridges, you think of roads, those kind of things, and through that fascination with materials and failure of materials and so on, finding your way into manufacturing, where it interestingly enough, your grandfather spent his career. It is fascinating to me how people can find these different routes into the world of manufacturing. So that leads to this opportunity with the University of Tennessee, with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which I understand, is abbreviated O, R, N, L, is that right? That is correct. Being a federal laboratory, we love our acronyms, right? Absolutely. Well. In education, we do as well. So you know, just whether it's a show that we're at, whether it's a trade organization, whether it's a program, whatever they all have letters, and in your case, or and also, we'll use that as the acronym for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, tell us about this, and specifically the manufacturing program in what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah. So

Bill Peter: 3:28

the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, we have a significant amount of advanced manufacturing research activities, everything from looking at Battery fabrication to how we could think about substitute materials for critical materials to looking at how we recycle and look at sustainability. Some of the areas, though, that we're spending a lot of time in more recently, are in areas like composites and carbon fiber production, additive manufacturing, machining, and in fact, our program today is really focused around smart manufacturing automation controls, using additive manufacturing as a tool in the toolbox. And how do we merge or converge multiple manufacturing technologies together to help with agility? I love

Matt Kirchner: 4:15

that way of looking at it. And you know, if you look 1015, maybe 12 years ago, and everybody was getting excited about 3d printing, additive manufacturing, and a lot of manufacturers were having a hard time finding where the overlap was, or is this really going to replace things like machining or metal stamping, or what have you? And and our message was always, look, we're not going to replace those technologies, but there are ways to augment it, through things like work, holding finding new applications for materials, maybe things that we can't do in certain metals that we're able to do, for instance, in carbon fiber, 3d printing. And I think we're at a point now where additive has found its place in manufacturing, and that's a really, really exciting time to be in the world of manufacturing, as we see these emerging technologies. You also mentioned all the different applications that you're involved in. So I think about every. Thing from whether it's composite materials and carbon, whether it's additive manufacturing. You mentioned battery technology as well. Hit on that just briefly, especially in this age where we're trying to figure out EV in the automotive space, where we're trying to figure out energy storage and a lot of different spaces and alternative energy, for example, what are you doing on the battery

Bill Peter: 5:17

side? So in the battery, Oak Ridge, for quite some time, has worked on things like lithium ion I think there's two different approaches. One on how we look at transportation, and coming up with batteries that have a smaller volume as well as way less and are more affordable, sure, and then on the stationary side, and thinking about large batteries. And so we're doing a lot of work in areas like sodium ion batteries, solid state batteries, that is where we're starting to think as we go forward and start looking at both the structure as well as energy storage. Can you start combine those into the same materials as you start to fabricate them, as well as areas like flow batteries, which make a lot of sense as we start thinking about building construction and trying to look at stationary type of energy storage. So

Matt Kirchner: 6:03

really exciting time. I didn't realize you were that deep into the battery stuff. And when you mentioned that, I was like, oh, that's just another application for some of these emerging technologies on the material side. That didn't occur to me. So thanks for filling us in on the I also want you to fill us in on the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility called the MDF, of course, another acronym for the ORNL, yes, but I know you're doing a ton of cutting edge research in this space, and I know our audience would love hearing about maybe a recent breakthrough that you've seen and as a result of the work that you're doing with the MDF. So

Bill Peter: 6:32

I'll start a little bit with the mission we're trying to go through and look to see, how do we help with the domestic supply chain, explicitly, as we look at clean energy, a lot of our components, as we think about energy systems, transportation, buildings, even as we look at batteries and the grid, a lot of those are fabricated overseas. And we're trying to see where and how can we bring those back, making them affordable. We're also trying to think about higher performance and also integrating smart manufacturing, not just to large companies, but how do you get that integrated into small, medium enterprises and really be able to help be competitive in that space? And I start with that because I think it'll make sense as we start looking at some of the breakthroughs as we've been working inside that area, one of the areas that we've spent a lot of time lately is looking at large scale metal printing. We already have been working heavily looking at large scale polymer printing. In fact, at the entrance of IMTS is this strategy, which was something we did back in 2014 a decade ago. Huh? Create a whole industry just on thermoplastic printing that usually has a fiber included in it to make large polymer parts, got up to about 500 pounds per hour deposition rates in that Wow. We're now getting into a lot more work in metal printing, and have worked with companies like Lincoln Electric and others to look at deposition GKN for titanium, looking at Laser wire, Lincoln Electric for looking at ARC wire type materials. In fact, we've now started taking that and going into that whole idea of different tools in the toolbox. One of the things we're showing here is the future foundries is a convergent manufacturing platform where we have machining, then we're integrating it with directed energy deposition, or metal printing, with metrology and with localized heating on a pallet system. Okay, the whole basis here is Federation of the systems getting it so each of those systems are talking to one another, and how do we automate and help with agility? So if I look at low production parts, how do we make it where it's feasible to go into low production parts and be able to automate those systems to work together? Yeah,

Matt Kirchner: 8:56

those are all things that are fascinating to me. And of course, our listeners are accustomed to hearing is talking about kind of those low volume, high mix manufacturing applications which are much harder to automate than a situation where you're making the same part over and over and over again. So I can totally see where you've got the combination of additive metal, 3d printing, you've got machining, you've got a palletizing operation and so on. What's the application for something like that? So give us you know, you're working with GKN and Lincoln Electric. Those are some pretty well recognized organizations in manufacturing. What's the end use product? Or what are you hoping that would come from something

Bill Peter: 9:29

like so there's a whole range, and it goes everything from like with GKN, we've been working on titanium for aircraft components. Okay, most people don't recognize as you get on a plane, there's been an increasing amount of titanium that complements the carbon fiber, light weight and high strength is that kind of the there's a concern on galvanic corrosion from the composite

Matt Kirchner: 9:52

plating guy. So you're starting to talk my language absolutely

Bill Peter: 9:55

and so as we've done that, though, titanium is usually at very low. Yields. It's between 10 to 15% yields. But you do heavy machining, and part of it's because the complexity of the parts that you're fabricating. We take milled product or forged sheet, plate, what have you, and then go through and machine out the finished part with additive. We can get much hiring yield. So you can get up to 7080, 90% yield. So the companies are spending a lot less time on machining and having a whole bunch of chips that you are you talking about? Production yield, actually, material yield. Got it. I wanted to clarify, just to make sure we appreciate that clarification. Yeah, it's material yield. So they typically call it buy to fly ratio, which you usually end up with a 12 to one buy to fly. 12 pounds are purchased. One flies away, which is very pictorial. As you think about this, we're really trying to go through and see how we drive that efficiency lower the overall cost for those aircraft components, at the same time of going through and thinking about energy use and efficiency as we do that Sure. Another application though, in the steel is we have all types of metal component tree, and one of the big issues we see today is as I start looking at whether it's wind energy, whether we're looking at nuclear energy, and trying to think about reactors, a lot of these large metal components we're pulling or having to bring overseas, and there's lead time issues. There's a lot of challenges as we try to think about how to innovate and make them better. And so we're spending a lot of time in looking at, how do we fabricate these large metal components, typically steels, that we can go through and put an application at a lower cost, and to that discussion we had earlier, it may be that I take a cast product and add on to that cast product as we need to fascinating. One of the most interesting projects we have that's coming up is one that in which we're working with a pretty large team, voice hunting and Ingles arc welding and going through and actually building Francis runners. What's a Francis runner? It's a complex turbine that goes into a hydro dam. Okay? And our access to those are limited in the US. It's hard to produce these in the US, and so we're trying to augment to see where and how we're totally building this one actively. It's going to be between a 35,000 to 70,000 pound part. Wow. But the idea is to learn from this and understand where should we be using additive with other technologies to be able to build those complex shape so it

Matt Kirchner: 12:39

almost feels like, in some cases you're trying to, you know, you mentioned now, I think at least three times in manufacturing and production and engineering that's taking place offshore, right? And we're bringing that back and trying to bring that back to the United States, but not necessarily bringing it back in the way that it's being done, but but leap frogging the technology and finding new ways to find applications or to produce new applications for things we've traditionally done offshore, doing them here in the US, but doing them using advancing technologies. Is that a fair assessment? That's a very fair assessment. You know, behind all this is the digital backbone to me, right? And it is trying to understand where the proper technology comes in, and how do I go through and use the information flow to better assess the situation. So a lot of the things that you'll see under our development are looking at smart manufacturing, how we extract data as we're we're actually producing these parts right using machine learning to very quickly be able to go through and see, when are we either out of geometry, when are we going to have various different defects in the component? And be able to figure out, can we actually get around that and do real time modifications, awesome to the systems we're building? Yeah. So I mean, it's the extension of the whole industry, 4.0 concept, which we've been talking now for 789, years, maybe even longer, about smart sets of smart devices, out on the out on the edge. They can think for themselves. They can communicate with other smart devices. They're gathering tremendous amounts of data, more data and manufacturing than we've ever had before in a lot of a lot of folks that have kind of taken that first step into smart technology are like, Okay, well, that's awesome. I'm collecting all this data. What am I doing with the data? And what you're telling me is that you're able to use those sensors and devices the data that they're collecting. You're able to acquire that data, create a data set of some sort, and then utilize artificial intelligence and its subset machine learning to find patterns in that data, to predict future failure, to find anomalies in the processes. Is that right?

Bill Peter: 14:37

That is correct. In fact, I'll give the example. In powder bed. We have a software called Peregrine. Some powder bed would be part of bed, metal, 3d printing. Is that right? Yeah, where we're either doing binder, jet, laser, e beam, you're taking a layer of powder, and you've either got an energy source or essentially a resin that you're going through and building up your component layer by layer. One of the things. That we've done is we'll use high speed near IR cameras as you're building up those parts, and we can image the defects real time as you're building those up. And as we do that, we can start to see little nuances, like maybe I have a parameter difference here, or the slicing software to dictate where that beam goes, is changed, and be able to pick up those defects they're coming up from those, those different anomalies. Very cool. So it's almost like a born, qualified type component. I can give you the digital file, give you all the information of what's happened to that part when I finish building the part. Well,

Matt Kirchner: 15:38

let me ask you this out of curiosity, because a lot of times, as we're working and talking to manufacturers, you know, they're understanding, I mean, in your case, you're using, I'm sure, a lot of different sensors, devices, cameras, gathering this information. What's the machine learning platform that you're using? I mean, as people think about, you know, formatting it in Data Factory and using something like Microsoft Azure to analyze that data, kind of at the cloud level, what are you doing with the

Bill Peter: 16:01

data? A lot of what we're doing is actually homegrown and developed, and then we're engaging industry as we develop it. And part of the reason I bring that up is it's tying in all the different pieces. So we've built our own slicer technology. We have over 200 users now using the slicer

Matt Kirchner: 16:21

and slicer technology for our audience. Just give them a quick definition. The

Bill Peter: 16:24

slicer is basically the software that basically decides where and how the robot or the beam or the gantry is going to go to layout or print that component in additive manufacturing got it and so as you're developing that, and I want to get key features or feedback you want to integrate these and in fact, I think one of the strengths of the laboratory we have, we have the fastest super computer, so we spend a lot of time with data. We can handle large amounts of data, fastest in the world, fastest in the world, no way. Wow, yeah. And we have advanced characterization and a lot of materials background. So we're taking those strengths together to basically build tools that we can go through and process this data and see what's going on. So a lot of it is built in our core, at our place, and then connecting with industry on how does this work, and how would you start to implement it? Okay, as as we go through that, though, we understand not everybody has a super computer in their backyard, so trying to understand how we go to low order models and efficiency as we do this, and that's where a lot of the AI or machine learning activities come from. It, we do partner with other companies. In fact, we have over 280 partnerships with industry. And so while a lot of the way we're handling the data may be at our own core activities, we are then looking to see how did Kiwi work with other companies and try their software, and how it would connect with what we're building awesome.

Matt Kirchner: 17:57

And then the goal ultimately is to do you commercialize the research directly. Are you partnering with other companies that are utilizing your learning or how to kind of what happens next, all

Bill Peter: 18:06

above. So we're funded by the advanced materials and manufacturing technology office our Department of Energy. They support our core research. They also, each year, put about$2 million down for when a company comes in looks at what we're doing, they can basically go through and write up collaborative research activity with us. This has made it really, really easy for companies to come in and try out the technologies that we're developing. I'd say we have unique relationships with the equipment manufacturers we enter under much larger collaborative activities with those equipment manufacturers, where they actually come into our facility work hand in hand with us. And part of that is to try to make sure that when we finish the activity, it is seamless in the transfer of the technology. But the nice part is you're building off of that. I sort of see the equipment manufacturers as the upstream. That means that material providers, software providers and end users can then all go and start using that equipment, technology and try before they buy.

Matt Kirchner: 19:13

Yeah, I love that. And one of the reasons I'm enjoying so much our conversation here with Dr Bill Peter, who is the Director of Advanced Manufacturing, should say for advanced manufacturing at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is, you know, all the convergence of different technologies you've brought up already. We've talked about additive we've talked about subtractive manufacturing, meaning machining. We've talked about robotics and automation. You're talking about slicing, you're talking about software. We're talking about AI, we're talking about machine learning and all of these things that, for you know, quite honestly, Bill, I've been saying for a long time, we're going to converge in the world of manufacturing, necessitating a whole new type of worker in manufacturing. All the things that we've been predicting and talking about are the exact things that you're doing at ORNL. And so I want to ask you this. I mean, as you look to, you know, the next two to five years for the American work. Worker. And as you look to bringing manufacturing and all these different applications from offshore into the United States, which are, you know, it's great for employment, it's great for our economy, it's great for our national security, it's really, really important work, but it's not a one sided equation, right? We've got an obligation here in this country to figure out what the next generation of workers gonna do. So not just an additive, although I want you to touch on that. But as you look at these convergences of technology and young people, or really anybody who's interested in getting into advanced manufacturing, how is what manufacturers, or for that matter, those doing research in the manufacturing space, how is what they are looking for in their next generation of team members going to look different here in the next

Bill Peter: 20:40

several years? So I think the areas that I've already started to see a change in is areas like computation, mathematics, looking to better understand trends that you see within data. I think that's a key aspect that we're seeing, that you know, when I was just getting started was not something it was something you could do, and there was modeling, but it was not a large area of interest. To me, something that has grown substantially, and I think creates a whole bunch of of new interest with that, I still think you're going to have problem solving is still going to be very key, for sure. I think as we, as we look at it, the engineering background mechanical engineers understanding how things work, that's an important aspect. Understanding your materials is still a very important discipline, but I think it's really that that idea of understanding statistics, understanding computational tools, is some that'll continue to increase and drive new, new opportunity for students.

Matt Kirchner: 21:45

So let me ask you this. I mean, does that mean that students need to be, you know, in order to be successful in manufacturing, need to be full on, like, master's degrees in data science, or are there kind of some on ramps and off ramps we can think about for people coming into manufacturing at different starting points in terms of what they need to know?

Bill Peter: 22:02

Yeah, obviously, I don't think all of them need to have PhDs or masters in that space. I think it needs to be a various set of skills. I do think understanding interfaces with that information is something that will drive even for those on the floor, you'll start to see the scenario of being able to visualize data and understand it real time, and how that modifies the overall system. I think those will be critical as we're starting to engage more and more of this practice. I think there's plenty of applications, though, for individuals that have that have great computer skills to get in areas like modeling and other activities, seeing the information and data, and may not even need advanced degrees as they get into a lot of those activities as well.

Matt Kirchner: 22:52

Couldn't agree with you more. And by coincidence, I was just having a conversation this morning with a gentleman by the name of Leo Reddy, who is the founder of the manufacturing skills Standards Council and Leo and I were talking about the kind of skills that'll be important for the frontline worker, I mean literally, for the person coming into manufacturing. And I think you hit on some of them that are really, really important, that if I'm working at a machine tool, if I'm working at on a production line that's combining additive and subtractive and other technologies being able to understand data visualization, and by that we mean it's not necessarily diving into a huge, large language model and going through every single line item of data. It's saying, all right, how can I read things like graphs and other outputs from a human machine interface at the production line that's telling the information data driven about how my line is performing, whether it's yield, productivity, cycle time. You know, some predictive data or model that we have, and being able to at least interact with that data on a real, down to earth basis, I think is going to be, is going to be something that's really, really important. I know something that's really important to you is this new partnership that you have with the University of Maine. Love to learn a little bit about this partnership that you have, and I understand it's unique. So maybe share with our audience a little bit how it might differ from some of the other academic partnerships you've been a

Bill Peter: 24:06

part of, yeah. So one of the things we've been trying to look at is, uh, sustainability and trying to think about localized materials.

Matt Kirchner: 24:13

What is a localized material? Is that a material that's drawn from a local area, local area?

Bill Peter: 24:18

Yeah. So, so instead of thinking about centralized manufacturing. Are there opportunities where you could look at what local resources I have and be able to use those? One of those that's really easy to sort of think about, and picture is biomass, and thinking about trees and other plant matter, and how can I use this into products? And if we go back to, I think it was about the 2015 2016 time frame you had Maine actually go through, where about five of the different paper plant production facilities closed down. And it was, it was a big emergency for the state of Maine, just because of how much they do with wood products. And. And soy and oscan, who is one of our researchers working this space, he had been studying, if you break down plant matter to its fundamental basics, it gets into these things called nano crystals and nano fibrils. I think for the listeners, the most important aspect of that is they have some really nice structural properties to them at the Nano scale, right at the Nano scale, and you could put those into polymers and actually get engineered products out of it. And so what we did was saying, Could we start to augment and create value added products with them? And they also do a lot of work in paper and processing of wood products to break those down. They were just getting started into heavy and large scale Palmer printing. And actually brought those two together and started looking at high deposition rates of bio based materials to build up structures and areas we're thinking about are things like packaging, thinking about buildings and structure. And when I say that, you think about a home, and we have a huge deficit in our homes at this point, can we start to go through and actually augment or implement some automation and even the construction area as well, and even think about industrialized construction, we actually three printed a house. It's about 600 square feet that is all based off of bio based materials. It's essentially got wood flower in it into a bio based polymer. Built the whole house in three sections. Were able to go through and basically assemble that in about half a day because we had already print the parts and then finished it all out for the next couple weeks after that.

Matt Kirchner: 26:43

Unbelievable. So if you think about boiling that down a little bit into into the sub components of what you just talked about, I mean, first of all, you know, when we think about sustainability and locally sourced products, right? So if you're able to build these polymers out of locally acquired, nano scale renewable products, right? So these are all things that, if I'm talking about a plant that's renewable right at the location. And we think about, you know, whether it's extractive mining, or we think about all the transportation that goes into moving materials, all of that drops out of the model, because I've got the materials that are being created right near the source of consumption or the source of use. And then I'm taking those materials, and I'm using additive manufacturing, in this case, to basically 3d print. You set a 600 square foot house, which is, you know, incredible. And just, you know, it's like a tiny house that you're 3d printing out of locally sourced materials. And it's, it's completely sustainable, completely renewable. And really kind of speaks to the future of, you know, what the technology can look like in terms of other applications of that technology. So 3d printing a house would be one of them. Are there other things you're thinking about? Bill,

Bill Peter: 27:45

yeah, one of the biggest areas we found at the MDF, as well as the main we get a lot of industry that comes. In fact, I get about 1100 companies that visit the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility or MDF per year, every year. Wow. 1100 Yeah, 1100 so we get a lot of information from them, yeah. And tooling, molds, dyes, jigs, fixtures. Is a big, big area that we've less about cost. It usually has to do with lead time and the speed of innovation, the speed of fabrication. And one of the things we've looked at is being able to create recyclable, low cost mold. So one of the areas we've worked with is the boating industry main where you can go through, fabricate the mold now and then use that mold to build your boats. We've also done that with the precast concrete industry and gate construction. We actually, if you're ever in New York, see the Domino Sugar building. Okay, the entire concrete facade was built using 3d printed molds. Wow, is about 65,000 pounds of material that's led us to recycling as well as sustainable material practices like bio based materials to go through and look at those molds, and whether we can bring down the cost of the this upfront material by using those bio based materials. I

Matt Kirchner: 29:07

love that. I mean, you think about the world of manufacturing that I spent all my time in, and you know, you're trying to innovate at speed, and then all of a sudden you build a new machine tool, or you need a new machine tool or a mold or a fixture or work holding device, what have you. And you know, you go to some company, maybe in the US, maybe in Asia, who knows? And the lead time is 369, months to get that to now, all that innovation stands still. And what you're saying is that we can do that with locally sourced components in real time, in a way that we don't have to necessarily wait for somebody to build up that fixture. Could certainly see how that works in the in the marine industry, in the construction industry and so on. So great things coming from this partnership with the University of Maine. I know that's not the only partnership you have. And in as much as you and I are recording this episode at the International manufacturing technology show here in Chicago, Illinois this week, you referenced that a little bit earlier the last time we were here with the shows, every two years, we interviewed every. Single USA National Manufacturing Institute. And I know you're involved with one of them, that's IAC MI, and that's all focused on workforce training. Give our our audience, if you will, a primer on the manufacturing institutes, and then tell us about this

Bill Peter: 30:12

partnership. Oak Ridge is heavily supports quite a few of those. I personally spent a lot of time with side Manny, which is cyber security, says me, that's the Smart Manufacturing. I

Matt Kirchner: 30:24

know I'm well, in fact, John dykes been a guest on the podcast, the CEO, great guy.

Bill Peter: 30:28

That's That's great. In fact, we're going to have our annual, uh, sesame's annual meeting will be at Oak Ridge this year, really, yeah. So yeah,

Matt Kirchner: 30:35

keep your eyes open for their new smart manufacturing trainer. I don't know if you've seen that or not. Sesame has a smart sensors trainer around smart manufacturing, and when they're there, you say you should check that. Oh, that's

Bill Peter: 30:44

great. We'll go through that. Yeah. I Acme is one that we helped found at the very beginning. It's in composites, and as we worked with Acme, we've looked at, how do we lower the overall cost for carbon fiber, for composites, and show how we can start using it for application. For energy, you know, energy use,

Matt Kirchner: 31:04

what is an application in energy for for carbon fiber, for composites. So most people, when you think about carbon fiber and composites, you think about aircraft, right? Or race cars, or we are race bikes. In my case, bicycles, Yep, absolutely. Actually,

Bill Peter: 31:16

the largest national need for it is in wind turbine blades. Interesting, okay, and it's actually for the wind turbine spars explicitly, but it's a huge application, and it's growing as we continue to build more and more wind energy turbines, right? And so what we've tried to do is understand the precursor, which is about half the cost, how we can lower the carbon fiber, and then come up with automated approaches to fabrication of composite components. So everything from fiber to composites, we've been doing work in that space, even using Smart Manufacturing on the carbon fiber production, which is not something that you typically see with a lot of carbon fiber production. What's an example there visually, being able to look at the fiber as you're producing and being able to actually tell certain features when it comes to oxidation, graphitization, to make sure that the fiber is going to have the mechanical performance you're expecting out of it. It's visually looked at as we're going through, and able to make real time changes through those process parameters as you're going through, looking at so you're not

Matt Kirchner: 32:20

only like doing predictive analytics, but actually changing the manufacturing process based on the data that's going through. That's

Bill Peter: 32:26

really cool. Yeah. And so with acne, we've spent quite some time with them, working in that space, and one of the things we've done is work with them for a lot some of the different workforce development activities. If I take a step back regionally. We're very close to the University of Tennessee, and even though we have 50 different partnerships with universities, we've been able to form up and create what we call their governor's chairs. This is something that the state of Tennessee has brought in, where the the professors are half time at UT, half time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. One of those is Uday video, who is the Chief Technology Officer for IAC. Me, as we've gone through, we've gotten to connect with acne in looking at that workforce element, and that first started in what we were doing on the composite side, but that has grown, and one of the biggest areas is machining. Back in I think it was about 2018 2019 there was an executive order to look at machine tools. And the concern over where machine tools was going, we led that and brought some great talent from across the nation to come together and talk about it. That spurred on the Americas cutting edge, which is a Department of Defense, IBAS, which is industrial base and assessment sustainability, and went through and worked with them to basically put together this America's Cutting Edge program that's at Oak Ridge and at Acme, okay to train people, and it's made up of a couple different elements. One is a we went through and put internet curricula. And one of the other parts of this that was really important was the fact that we didn't want it just to be for, you know, collegiate level, or we really wanted to get more people engaged with this. So this is being an online it's free. Anybody can go over and do it. It's about a six hour course. So what are the learning outcomes? What are people learning? So they're learning about advanced methods and knowledge base in the machining process itself, certain things like how the cutting head, the angle can change the shape of the chip, the efficiency of what we're doing. Sure we've also tied into it some of the various activities at Oak Ridge within that in fact, one thing that started off as a tech collaboration from the MDF, that has led into a part of the ACE program was actually working with MSC. We brought in about 1314, MSC reached. All tech managers that came in, we took a concept of, if you do a tap test and look at the acoustics and look at it in accelerometer, you can actually look at the efficiency of the cutting of the system. And went through, created an app for this, and it can improve cutting rates by two to 5x

Matt Kirchner: 35:23

Wow. And that's an app that would be used by a contract machining company or who, who's

Bill Peter: 35:27

so, so MSC, and this is, this is an important one, because sometimes getting into small companies, it's, it's hard to implement or engage on certain smart manufacturing practices, or you're worried about buying equipment or what have you right. In this case, MSC actually offers this as a service to those that are buying the tools from them, so they will come in and actually perform this with you, and then show the optimization. And the first couple years they had, I think, a little over a $20 million savings for those companies just based off of doing this, and are projecting that it'll be about seven, $50 million worth of savings long term, unbelievable through using that so, so that's something that's come out of that activity as well, right? We've had about 10,000 people participate on the online curriculum, and it's actually broadened to do metrology as well as machining, composites and a couple other areas as well. There's also, though, a on site. So after you go through and do this six hour course, if you have interest, you could actually set up for it on site. And there's 36 different locations through the nation that they've done and had about 1800 people perform the one week on site, education activity as well, hands on. So

Matt Kirchner: 36:44

you're taking some really complex concepts, right? We're talking, I mean, think about all the things we've talked about, nano scale technology, carbon fiber, accelerometers, acoustic testing, all these other complex concepts and boiling it down into it sounds like some bite sized pieces that could be understood by anybody with some modicum of manufacturing understanding or materials understanding. Tell us about the magic of how you do that. How do you take this really complex stuff that you're working on and kind of distill it into something that makes sense to somebody that's accessing it via e learning, or the 1800 people that attended this, this event that you had.

Bill Peter: 37:20

Yeah, so one of our other governor's chairs, his name is Suresh Babu, actually laid out several years with us, a braided rivers approaches, the way he called it. The concept is, is that as you go through and look at education, I want multiple different approaches that are hitting different individuals as we, as we think about this, that there isn't a one size fit fits all right. And so that's led to everything from us having internship programs, we typically each year. Oak Ridge is a total has about 1000 people. We have about 100 people, 50 to 100 people over in our space, specifically, that are working on these advanced manufacturing technologies. The benefit of that is hands on activities, getting to try out the equipment, really getting to learn from it, not just classroom learning, but actually getting hands on on that. We also had an internship program for technicians that would work on the equipment, with the idea that when they finished working with this, they would then go on and take jobs outside. And so looking to see how we spur that on, connecting with the various different schools we've talked about. And then UT, we've had anywhere from 60 to 150 students that are engaged, that are local, working between within the ecosystem, whether that's Acme, Oak Ridge. What have you? Awesome. Each of these have had different aspects of how you go through a lot of what we're doing is heavily in the sciences, and that's not what you're necessarily looking at from the industry standpoint. I talked about the number of companies that come in and work with us that's important for us to understand what's important to them and how we translate those activities. And that also goes back to the equipment manufacturers working on the floor with us, so we can see, right, how do these actually work into the the machine itself, and what are the things we need to be educating or working around as you start doing that,

Matt Kirchner: 39:23

and you're focused on what is important to the individual manufacturers. You suggest 1100 of them a year that are coming in, engaging with the work that you're doing. What are you hearing from them about their biggest workforce challenges,

Bill Peter: 39:34

the workforce challenges that we've seen as we've gone through. A lot of the interest has been on that hands on. In fact, one of the things that we did with Maine, Maine actually started a while back, a merit badge type of process to go through, and it was not just to show the classroom, but actually get hands on training. They've opened that up to getting these badges for. Or actually time on the large scale printing machines and some of the other composite equipment, and being able to have sound amount of time between 100 to 300 hours of application on those machines to start showing a certain proficiency associated with that Sure, and I think that information is all been fed from industry to Maine to lay out, what is it that they they want those, those students, to actually learn from it? Are

Matt Kirchner: 40:34

there specific areas where they're saying, Hey, these are the things that we were these are the kind of the skills or the competencies we really want our workforce coming to us with for

Bill Peter: 40:41

them work in the the bio mass and understanding some of the wood products, understanding the 3d printing and how to operate out of machines, were actually things they were asking for within the composites. Part of the reason we've gone heavily into the machining area is that skill set in machining and making sure that we continue to have a large demographic that understands machining. That actually was part of the executive order, uh, findings, when we went through and did it was just the average age of what we're seeing in the machining area, right? And trying to bring more people into that space with a core knowledge of how you know, machining practices, modern machining practices, and what they could be learning from that area.

Matt Kirchner: 41:30

Well. And I think that's a key part of it. When you think about young people considering careers in manufacturing, you know, it's interesting. If you look at all the data, the number of young people that want careers, quote in tech, right? And it's like, depending on the survey, 60 to 80% of students are saying, I want a career with a tech company. And then you think about the kinds of technologies that you're talking about here, and the kinds of intricate sciences that you're working with, the research you're doing, the future of manufacturing, all these different applications, the number one space for tech careers, in my opinion, is in manufacturing, if you want to work in tech, there's a place for you in manufacturing is all these technologies are advancing in the ways that you're describing. So a message to all of our students that listen every week and to their teachers, make no mistake, manufacturing careers are absolutely tech careers, and you've got all kinds of manufacturers coming to you with these really complex challenges that they're trying to address with that next generation of talent. Give me an example, if you would, of you know, a really off the wall kind of unique question or challenge that a manufacturer came to you with

Bill Peter: 42:34

Lockheed Martin when they came in, they had just gotten into large scale polymer printing. They had already started to adapt a way for extruding it and trying to make large parts with it. We got engaged with them to understand, how could we start increasing the rates of production. It was very small at that point. We started looking at screw extruders and gantry systems to keep with the pace and start getting into really large systems from this, as we started to develop that, we found you had to redefine the extruders. You had to redefine the materials. As we went through Local Motors, saw we were doing this on a home grown system, and signed up for IMTS, actually, to 3d print the car, the strategy that is outside, yeah, we had a six month or eight month window to try to do that very quickly. Had to connect at that point, was with since staying corporate, where we utilize their gantry based system, it had the right head, ability to carry the weight of the extruder, and can move at the right rates as we did that. So six months to figure out how to 3d print a car. Yeah, six months to go from I don't have a printer that can do this to going through and actually being able to print. In fact, we didn't get it quite right until we were actually here at at the show, oh, a screw extruder that was developed that was at that point, about 40 to 60 pounds per hour. Like I said, we're up to about 500 pounds. Just give you some order Wow, of where that exponential economy, and that's how, and before that, we were at like, 10 to 12 pounds per hour. You weren't able to go through and actually, the first couple times we print the car, it would even in quarters, it would crack up on us. And so we really had to develop, or very quickly change, the entire printer itself and develop the materials. And part of the reason I say materials is you actually had to put about 20% glass or carbon fiber to keep the coefficient thermal expansion low in the polymer, to actually keep it from not pulling up on you and cracking or distorting the shape. So that was all done very, very quickly, and it was this scenario between Lockheed and then later having Local Motors say, I'm challenging you, and we need to go through. And see, can we do this? Yeah,

Matt Kirchner: 45:01

when you think about the companies that you've mentioned, companies like Lockheed Martin, we talked earlier about GKN, I talked about Lincoln Electric, when you're working with some really, really cool companies, and it speaks to again, this, this incredible opportunity we have to upskill a generation of manufacturing talent, you know, let's turn the clock back ahead, I should say, and dream a little bit. Bill, you know, 10, 510, years from now, even as we look at the, you know, the skills that are going to be important in manufacturing and those types of careers, when you sit down with, I'm sure you've got tremendous numbers of students that take interest in the work you're doing as well. What do you tell them about the future of advanced manufacturing and what they should be thinking about,

Bill Peter: 45:39

I think, to be open minded and connect in a multi disciplinary team. Industry typically does this and pulls together what different backgrounds they need as they're going through and looking at however, in our education system, as well as at the National Laboratories, we don't always it's sort of birds of a feather flock together, right? And doesn't integrate. And frankly, the strength of what we're seeing comes from that multi disciplinary team we've even had internally concept of looking at, call it the renaissance person. How many different areas of development and different projects can you get into so keeping that open mind of learning new things, integrating the skill sets from I think is important as you look at this rapidly changing manufacturing area, and pulling those different strengths together and knowledge bases together, I think is really important for our future workforce well, and

Matt Kirchner: 46:43

it really speaks to how the world of work in manufacturing is changing your use of the term multi disciplinary and really thinking about, you know, somebody working in manufacturing 3040, years ago, maybe even 1020, years ago. You know, there was a place where you could step into running a machining center, working on an assembly line, working on a particle booth or so on, and if you wanted to probably have that job for almost your entire career. And now we think about how all these technologies are changing, how we have to pull people together from different parts of manufacturing, making sure that people have the understanding of, yeah, I may be an expert in additive but I need to understand subtractive. Or I may be an expert in subtractive or machining, but I probably need to have a knowledge of metal stamping or fabricating or joining or what have you. So all that interdisciplinary work, being able to work as a team, really, really important. And I think you're right, as we think about the importance for Multi Disciplinary interaction, the importance for understanding speed and manufacturing, not just in terms of the production process, but in terms of innovation, in terms of bringing products to market and so on. So it is going to be an exciting time to be in manufacturing again, whether you're doing the incredible research and leadership that you're involved in, whether you're involved on the manufacturing shop floor in terms of producing parts, this is a really exciting time to be a young person. And that's kind of where I want to finish our conversation. Bill is kind of turning back the clock to the time when you were a young person, maybe considering your career, and as you and I were talking, and as we we've discussed, had an opportunity to live all over the country, experience a lot of different cultures, a lot of different people as you were growing up. But I want you to go back to 15 years old, your sophomore year of high school. If you could go back to that young gentleman all those years ago and give him one piece of advice. Would that piece of advice be? What

Bill Peter: 48:26

I would say is, really, as you start to go through, be open to those things that make you uncomfortable, the biggest thing I've seen is growth opportunities in my own individual life are those when I was on the edge or not comfortable moving into new areas that really stretched your thinking or challenged you. And I think as we look at this acceleration of adoption and technologies changing, I think one of the most important things is leaning in and stepping into it continuously. I think that's the biggest piece, is resistance or not, jumping into it with both feet and trying to take a hold of it and then doing it again and again, as you have new opportunities to do so, especially

Matt Kirchner: 49:17

in this day and age in which we live, where we've got so many technologies coming at us, and not just the Smart Manufacturing, not just materials. We talked about, artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation. And I think there is a situation where a lot of folks look at all that and they become a little bit uncomfortable, and rather than running from that, we need to embrace the uncomfortable and embrace what, what the future holds for us, because it is a really, really exciting future. And I can't thank you enough, Bill for spending some time with us talking about that future. Our guest today on this episode of The TechEd Podcast has been Dr Bill Peter. He is the director for advanced manufacturing at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I want to thank our audience for joining us. If you love this, this particular episode as much as I. And talking so much about research and advancing manufacturing technologies, technologies in general, please visit us wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review. Give us five stars if you're so inclined, whether that's Spotify Apple Music or any of the 45 platforms on which we stream every single week at The TechEd Podcast, we would love to hear from you, and we'd also love for you to check out the show notes from this episode of the podcast. We have the best show notes in the business, and you'll find this particular episodes show notes at TechEd podcast. Slash Peter, that is TechEd podcast, slash P, E T, E R. My name is Matt Kirkner. I am the host of The TechEd Podcast. Thank you so much for being with us, and we will see you next week. You.