North India Gets its First ‘Cold Spray’ Lab with IIT Ropar-GE Collaboration

PATIALA: IIT Ropar had successfully got established state-of-the-art National Facility for Additive Manufacturing in collaboration with General Electric (GE) Company. The facility, which is now fully operational in the Mechanical Engineering department of the institute will be using high-pressure Cold-spray technology.

This facility has been primarily funded under Uchchatar Avishkar Yojana (UAY) and FIST-DST, Government of India. This cold-spray facility has the capability to provide working pressure of more than 50 bar at 1000oC for repair, refurbishment and component manufacturing for several advanced applications in power generation, aerospace, automobile, bio-medical, textile and processing industries. Cold spray is an eco-friendly and high rate production alternative to its various counterparts in the domains of additive manufacturing and coating technology.

While briefing about the facility and the technology, Prof. Harpreet Singh, Professor and Dean (ICSR), IIT Ropar, who is Principal Investigator of this project, said, “Cold-spray has great potential to be used for advanced manufacturing and surface engineering applications in context of the Industrial Internet trend. The facility will be an enabler and support for scientists, academicians and industrialists of the country. I invite them to visit IIT Ropar to undertake their experimental and research work. The institute has plans to set-up a Centre-of-Excellence in Advanced Intelligent Manufacturing in collaboration with Governmental agencies and Industry and this facility is the first step in the direction.”

The institute, in collaboration with GE, will organize a workshop on Cold-spray Applications in February 2020 to popularize this technology among various stakeholders. Prof. Singh added, “We will benefit through collaboration in terms of sharing the technical know-how and hands-on training in the area of Cold Spraying.”

Mariasundaram Antony, General Manager – India Engineering, GE Power, said, “We have been engaging with top researchers to forge deeper industry-academia partnerships. We are excited to see the depth of the basic research at IIT Ropar that connects academic research with direct industrial applications, adding such advanced capabilities to India’s technological ecosystem. GE continues to support innovation in this area. Earlier this year, we also collaborated with IIT Madras to establish a ‘Cold Spray’ SMART (Surface Modification and Additive Research Technologies) Laboratory.”

This project aligns well with the Government of India’s national initiatives such as ‘Make in India’ and ‘Skill India’, promoting the efforts around advanced manufacturing in the country.

Dr. Narinder Singh, IIT Ropar, Co-Investigator for the facility added, “This smart technology has application temperatures that are much lower than the other thermal-spray and welding processes, which means the distortion and stresses associated with those repair techniques are avoided; leading to a longer asset life.”

Dr. Harpreet Singh Arora and Dr. Harpreet Singh Grewal are also participating in this project from Shiv Nadar University, Noida as Co-investigators.

Source: TOI

Image Courtesy: Education Times