Description of capability
According to Bob Mumgaard:
The use of additive manufacturing for fusion-specific design elements such as first wall and vacuum vessel. Fusion has unique requirements for these components in terms of materials and heat extraction and operating environment. AM has developed generalized deposition tools. There is no framework for translating the two things together that bridges 1)Fusion specific requirements 2)Optimization of structures for fusion environment given AM constraints—ML/AI could help here 3) Design of components for actual manufacture 4) Production of components and 5) Test of components in the relevant environment. Fusion people toy around with small scale stuff but its not systematic and it is sub-critical mass. The Nat. Labs do some but its not fusion specific enough, they want to do basic capability building, and it’s so hard to work with them. The AM manufacturers are excited but fusion is not a large enough market to support them investing lots of resources into it. The fusion community constantly talks about “it would be great if…” but doesn’t do anything about it. The Feds don’t fund it because it is too applied. One could build a really kick-ass team to tackle this problem and prove that this thing is possible in an “ah ha” sense and then it would certainly get picked up by others once shown to be transformatively useful. We have thought about doing this and work with Velo3D and Relativity Space but it’s not a big enough focus for us to really build a team around. Recipient of the funding would probably be AM people that then work with fusion people, would have to work to identify. Happy to talk more.
Key people
Technology Readiness Level (1-9)
Needs that this could potentially address
Tech specs
Estimated time & cost to commercialize
Outstanding risks
See also
- Andrew Seltzman is developing LHCD components for the DIII-D tokamak using additive manufacturing and brazing, laser, & electron-beam welding. See article: Brazing, Laser, and Electron-Beam Welding of Additively Manufactured GRCop-84 Copper for Phased Array Lower Hybrid Launchers