Vanguard Magazine

game CHANGER 40 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2019 www.vanguardcanada.com See the full interview online Q What is your role at your organization today? We all wear multiple hats at Expanse. My major roles are to manage sales, op- erations and partnerships. For example, one of the things that sets us apart is our rapid pace of development. We are constantly innovating to improve and expand our service offering. Frequently, our team invents beautiful new inspec- tion tools that we hadn't even consid- ered two months before. One of my most important jobs is to get those tools into the hands of our clients as fast as possible. With these tools being cutting edge and often unfamiliar to our clients, it is necessary to build and maintain a reputation of honesty and extremely high quality, such that clients are not only willing but eager to try out our lat- est and greatest. Q What was your "aha" moment or epiphany that you think will resonate most with our reader? Tell us that story. Working with microscale X-ray CT, every time a new material or part is scanned, there is an exciting "aha" moment to get to see inside of it. The CT data provides thousands of internal cross-sections so you can digitally fly-through the part for inspection and characterization. Before our custom image analysis takes these images and turns them into graphs and charts for a client, these images provide the same epiphany as a when a student looks through a microscope for the first time. Open porous metal foams or car- bon fiber composite panels are especially interesting microstructures to visualize. Q What is the one thing that has you most fired up today? Expanse is especially excited to contrib- ute to advanced manufacturing and ma- terials that enable the next generation of aerospace and space applications. This includes parts and processes to con- solidate parts, make parts stronger and make vehicles more lightweight for im- proved efficiency. For example, we have been fired up to help analyze new tech- niques for building the next generation of rocket engines. Q What are some of the biggest impediments to innovation in your industry sector? In the two main industries we service (ad- ditive manufacturing and composites), process monitoring on the microscale is an impediment to taking parts beyond the prototyping stage. In additive manu- facturing, this means understanding the layering process from the building block powders through to the final part. Pow- ders are the key point of interest across this whole supply chain. Understanding what makes a good powder that spreads and prints well is a key concern for com- panies. It's important to understand the ideal shape or size distribution, as well as to reduce the defects in powders like in- clusions and intraparticle porosity. These issues oftentimes get trapped in a part and can directly lead to cracks and part failure. In short and long fiber-reinforced com- posites, the orientation and length of the ~10 micron diameter fiber are driving the mechanical properties of the part. Model- ling software is helpful to predict mold- ing and strength, but process monitoring with visualization is challenging to mea- sure. High resolution CT imaging plays a critical role in quality control and provides input data for modelling part manufactur- ing to overcome this impediment. Q What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the biggest changes in your industry over the next two years? In the next two years, I think the contin- ued adoption and growth of additive man- ufacturing will drive the biggest changes in part design and light-weighting for aerospace and defence applications. It is very exciting but can also be a very cum- bersome technology to get print quality at the level where you need it. Expanse and I think that integrating CT analysis early into a manufacturer's research and devel- opment process will continue to ease this barrier to adoption. The data provided by the thousands of CT cross-sections with digital image analysis and computer vi- sion will continue to be a more robust op- tion than traditional metallography tech- niques. With stringent FAA regulations on using additive manufactured parts in aerospace (or FDA in the medical indus- try), part qualification will continue to be a must, with similar critical performance specifications for the defence industry. James HinebaugH President ExpansE MicrotEchnologiEs

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