INPERSON
LEADING THE
WAY IN METAL 3D
PRINTING
Dr. Albert To of Franklin Park wins this year’s
Carnegie Science Center Award in Advanced
Manufacturing and Materials.
BY NICOLE TAFE
D
r. Albert To is enhancing modern technology by
the day. Establishing himself as one of the most
recognized computer modelers in metal 3D printing,
To was the winner of this year’s Carnegie Science
Center Award in Advanced Manufacturing and Materials.
To, 43, and his wife, Wingyee, have two children, Tilden and
Denalie. They have lived in Franklin Park for five years. To grew
up in Hong Kong, but immigrated to San Francisco after finishing
elementary school. He attended middle and high school in San
Francisco and went to college at the University of California at
Berkeley (UC Berkeley), continuing on for his master’s degree
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and doctoral
degree from UC Berkeley. To also did postdoctoral research at
Northwestern University.
Because of his groundbreaking research, To has helped
increase regional and national industry interest in metal 3D
printing. There are many products that metal 3D printing is
capable of producing, including pumps, heat exchangers and
fuel injectors, which have complex geometries making them
difficult to create using traditional manufacturing techniques. His
innovative ideas and ability to establish productive collaboration
with industry have led to 10 external grants totaling more than $4
million for the University of Pittsburgh in the past four years.
“My research group has been researching fast and accurate
computational methods to automate the design for metal 3D
printing,” explains To. “In the past, simulation-based engineering
design software was primarily developed for traditional
subtracting manufacturing, and 3D printing has a different set of
manufacturability constraints that a design has to satisfy. Hence
we needed to come up with novel algorithms to account for
these design constraints, and that is what we have been doing so
successfully in the past five years.”
To’s first metal 3D printing project was funded by America
Makes (National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute)
in 2013, in partnership with ANSYS, Alcoa and Acutec Precision
Machining to develop a design optimization method for
lightweighting 3D printed metal parts based on lattice structures.
Because of the success of that project, To and his team received
funding from America Makes to work on the second phase of the
project.
In the second project, the team grew to 10 members including
local companies like Aerotech and Oberg Industries and
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big corporations like United Technologies. The simulation
technology developed in these projects was later commercialized
by ANSYS and became part of its Additive Manufacturing Suite.
“I think why my research is able to attract interest from other
companies is because the developed simulation technology
really helps to save time and cost in design and manufacturing
tremendously,” says To.
There are still many metal 3D printing issues that To and his
team are actively conducting research on in order to make it
faster, cheaper and more reliable. “The current issues that we are
researching include how to mitigate deformation and cracking
during the build process via design optimization among other
developments,” he notes. These efforts have been supported
by funding from various government agencies including the
National Science Foundation (NSF), Army, NASA, Department
of Energy, and Pennsylvania government, in addition to America
Makes.
This year’s Carnegie Science Center Award in the Advanced
Manufacturing and Materials category was sponsored by
Kennametal Inc. and is given for outstanding technology
achievements in western Pennsylvania. “With two critical
regional partners—ANSYS and Oberg Industries—I have helped
establish the 1,200-square-foot ANSYS Additive Manufacturing
Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh and the
new Modeling & Optimization Simulation Tools for Additive
Manufacturing (MOST-AM) Consortium, a public-private
partnership aimed at developing the most advanced modeling
and simulation tools for metal 3D printing,” says To. “The
consortium’s goal is to collaboratively address the pressing
technical barriers to large-scale implementation of metal 3D
printing, and make it more efficient, economical and sustainable.
The consortium now has 25 member companies and government
agencies.”
“The Carnegie Science Center Award has meant a lot to me,”
he adds. “It’s a great recognition to the work that my research
team has put into metal 3D printing. The award also motivates
me to make metal 3D printing realize its full potential through
computer simulation and make Pittsburgh become a national and
international nexus for metal 3D printing research.” n