| Meet the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Frank Pfefferkorn Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
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Research area Research with a focus on where the tool meets the workpiece, whether that tool is a laser, mechanical cutting tool, friction stir tool, etc. Current research includes friction stir welding and processing; placing sensors in the coatings of cutting tools for smart manufacturing; solid-state metal additive-subtractive manufacturing (including friction surfacing); multi-material laser powder bed fusion (additive manufacturing), and laser remelting surfaces for polishing, structuring and hardening.
What excites you about your work?
“Our lab conducts fundamental research on solid-state metal additive manufacturing—printing things out of metal, but without melting. Our methods are well-suited for scaling up to print large objects, and it’s well suited for combining materials. I’m working on friction surfacing, in which we put a solid round bar of material in a milling machine, spin it up, and press it into the surface while we move sideways across the surface. If we do it right, we’ll leave a layer of metal behind. I’m excited about it because you can do it on any CNC machine, so everyone who thought they could only use their machines for cutting, it turns out, can also add material. A great application for this is repair and remanufacturing.”
What do you hope to achieve?
“My ultimate goal, with all the things I research, is that I hope I can help it be implemented commercially, that we can help generate knowledge about it, understanding of it, and develop predictive tools or methods that will actually be used to make parts. That’s ultimately where I want all of this to go.”
The contributions that Professor Pfefferkorn has brought to the field of additive manufacturing and tooling are highly innovative. We are excited to partner with industry to commercialize such technologies.
– Michael Carey, WARF, Licensing Manager
Want to learn more?
Michael Carey, [email protected], 608.960.9867