Sandia National Laboratories faces critical inefficiencies in procuring specialized 316L stainless steel components, with traditional casting and forging workflows requiring lead times up to eighteen months and occasionally producing parts that fail to meet quality standards. We evaluated the integration of Additive Manufacturing (AM) to augment Sandia’s existing supply chain and reduce these bottlenecks.
While AM enables production of complex geometries in hours rather than months, we recognized that the layer-by-layer fabrication process differed fundamentally from traditional monolithic casting and could introduce unique material defects. We investigated how these manufacturing variances impacted mechanical integrity through comprehensive testing of AM-fabricated specimens. We performed tensile testing to determine ultimate strength and torsional testing to evaluate shear properties.
Following mechanical failure, we utilized spectroscopy and fractography to examine the microstructure at fracture points, while Computed Tomography scans characterized internal pore distribution and structural defects. We then conducted a technoeconomic analysis to assess AM integration viability, comparing operational costs, material waste, and lead-time reductions against traditional methods. Our study determined whether the performance-to-cost ratio of additive manufacturing met Sandia National Laboratories’ rigorous strategic requirements.