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Calcium lanthanum sulfide is an infrared transparent ceramic with many desired properties including its high temperature optical and mechanical properties and its potential use in designing new multi-band optical components.  However current production methods for calcium lanthanum sulfide are relatively immature and often contain impurities that limit optical performance of the produced powders. ...

Calcium lanthanum sulfide (CLS) is a well known ceramic material that can be used in infrared optics for spectroscopy, imaging, and optical components of medical equipment. While CLS is a useful infrared transparent ceramic, the lack of a reproducible and dependable manufacturing process remains a significant hurdle to realizing its full utilization. The poor reproducibility is associated with var ...

There is a critical need for a high purity commercial source of calcium lanthanum sulfide (CaL2S4; CLS).  Ceramics made from CLS have an unusually broad range of transmittance in the infrared (IR), as well as high mechanical strength and environmental durability.  For these reasons, CLS is an ideal material for IR windows used in applications such as multispectral imaging.  CLS ceramics are not ...

Lorad Chemical Corporation (“Lorad”) has developed nano-scale high-purity Calcium Lanthanum Sulfide ("CLS") powders suitable for fabrication of near theoretical density infrared ("IR") transparent domes, windows, lenses, and other parts. CLS incorporated into optical components and domes / windows has several applications in IR optical sensing systems and IR lenses for laser applications. ...

Additive Manufacturing provides many potential advantages, relative to traditional manufacturing methods, for the Navy and other organizations in the aerospace community.  Although flight critical aerospace quality metal alloy components have been produced and flight tested, confidently expanding the use of AM in these applications requiring stringent quality control and repeatability. The vendor ...

Metal additive manufacturing (AM), particularly, laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF) has transformative potential to achieve geometric design freedom at low production volumes. However, porosity and localized defects remain a significant challenge to implementation in mission critical aerospace applications. While the quality of LPBF is now competitive with or surpasses castings for established materia ...

While AM systems, especially metal AM, bring revolutionary capabilities and have the potential to reduce supply chain issues and enable new designs through unique layer-by-layer fabrication capabilities, AM technologies currently suffer from defects that exist within the components. Defects such as porosity, inclusions, large-scale voids, and chemical inconsistencies can inhibit the functional per ...

The Multisensor Insitu Data with Machine Learning (MIDML) program will develop a convolutional neural network (CNN) to leverage data generated from multiple AM inprocess sensors. This can provide more accurate and reliable assessments and predictions of final part quality during layer-by-layer fabrication, in real time. The CNN will be developed for maximum prediction accuracy from multiple senso ...

Through this proposed SBIR effort, QuesTek Innovations LLC will develop a physics-enhanced machine learning (ML) software to reduce exhaustive typical on-destructive testing or enable feed forward control methodologies for fabrication of high-quality additive manufacturing (AM) component. Process induced defects like keyholing and lack of fusion porosity are shown to be strongly correlated with AM ...

While additive manufacturing (AM) has enabled the fabrication of complex geometries, process repeatability, and part quality has been an inhibitor to widespread industry adoption. Parts fabricated using metal AM can have their mechanical properties compromised due to the presence of defects. Presently, quality assurance is achieved by X-ray Computed Tomography (CT), which is costly and time-consum ...