This scaled miter gate print features a new milestone for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC, Vicksburg, Miss., U.S.). The structure measures 9 feet × 5 feet and was completed in 27 hours. Produced for Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, the component was sliced using Adaone — the all-in-one software platform by Adaxis (Bidart, France) — and manufactured on a Flexbot from CEAD Group (Delft, Netherlands).
A miter gate is a type of canal lock gate that meets in a “V” shape pointing upstream to help back water move boats between different water levels. According to Lucy Slattery, ERDC research engineer, “this was the largest part we have printed to date. It pushed the reachability limits of our robot and it took a lot of ‘Cool Path Editing’ to get it to completion.”
This gate will be used for hydrodynamic physical modeling of a miter gate – pintle structure in a flume — a physical scale model of a lock gate’s bottom pivot hinge.
CEAD’s LFAM systems, printing with fiber reinforcement, are rapidly scaling up industry.
