The Project
There is an enormous variety of bar-shaped metallic parts that are critical to the oil, gas and mining industries. Many of them might suffer from wear and abrasion. metallic machineries that suffer high levels of abrasion, impact and wear, so they are constantly replaced by new elements or have been manually recovered through welding, through inefficient and very expensive processes.
Thanks to the development of new advanced manufacturing techniques, today is possible to develop specialized machinery to automatically repair damage existing on metal parts, significantly impacting the industry in a positive way.
It is in this context that we propose the implementation of a new system of automatic repair of metallic elements, also integrating the ability to automatically assess the damage to be repaired and generating a repair strategy. Methods of digital reconstruction of damage to be repaired, metal welding processes, robotics and metallic additive manufacturing techniques will be used.
Our technological development will allow the industry to:
It is expected to have a system packaged in the form of a product-service that can be acquired by manufacturing companies that provide services to the industry. The system will have software and hardware components that will automate the repair process.
This project is led by a group of robotics and advanced manufacturing of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Chile (DIMEC), who have extensive experience in automation, robotics, digital manufacturing and 3D printing; counting with diverse laboratories, between which it includes the one of robotics of the DIMEC, the one of digital manufacture of the University of Chile (Fab Lab) and diverse metallurgical laboratories and of advanced manufacture, all these at disposal for a correct execution of the project.
Dr. Juan Cristóbal Zagal
Project Director
Dr. Rubén Fernández
Alternate Director