Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

FluoroSeal is a leading provider of innovative solutions to the flow control industry. FluoroSeal has been manufacturing and customizing a wide range of valves, parts, and accessories for the Oil & Gas, Chemical, Petrochemical, Power, Pharmaceutical, and Mining industry for 38 years. The manufacturing method used to produce these valves is lost-wax casting. This method can achieve high dimensional precision; however, it is costly and becomes challenging when casting objects with a core, therefore machining is usually required. The alloys used to produce FluoroSeal’s products are typically nickel-based alloys, titanium or zirconium alloys. These alloys were first used in the gas turbine and aerospace industry but have become the preferred material for the manufacturing of wellhead components, auxiliary and down hole tools, and sub surface safety valves due to their great mechanical strength, high temperature properties and corrosion resistance. The production lost-wax shells for casting is an extensive process timewise which results in the parts being relatively expensive. It is a 6 steps process which can take as much as three weeks until a part is cast. This includes the wax model injection, the primary layer coating, intermediate layer coating, secondary slurry coating, dewaxing and casting. The golden rule of additive manufacturing (AM), and particularly laser powder bed fusion, is that if the part can be done using another process, it is usually less expensive this way. AM is usually reserved for new geometry or design that cannot be produced any other way. In a preliminary work with Fluoroseal Valves, however, it has been shown that small valves could be produced at a lower cost than lost wax investment casting. Therefore, the interest for the development of multiple materials for valves has risen, with the specific development for AM in mind. There is particular interest in the development of printing larger valves with thickness up to 35 mm in certain sections. The size of such valve, the wall-thickness combined with the geometry in the shape, an elongated H brings forth additional risks of distortion, cracking and internal defects. Therefore, the main objective of this project is to develop sound printing parameters for multiple materials to be used for the production of thick-walled industrial valves.