From 3D-printed figurines for students to “quantum dots” and nanocomposites, Olga Ivanova is a force to be reckoned with in the AM universe
Olga Ivanova has 3D-printed plenty of interesting parts during her time in manufacturing. Rocket nozzles. Turbine blades and impellers. Neonatal tracheostomy tubes. There are more, which we’ll get to in a moment, but to Star Wars fans, it’s the Static Dissipative Yoda that’s most intriguing.
“We printed a bunch of Yoda and Groot (Guardians of the Galaxy) figurines for high school students who visited our facility recently,” said Ivanova, director of technology at Mechnano, an additive manufacturing materials developer near Phoenix. “It’s our way of getting young people interested in additive manufacturing.”
She’s quick to point out that those educational giveaways were made of a gray-colored base resin, not the more expensive static dissipative material (which is black) that she spends much of each day working with—and yes, which she occasionally uses to print Yodas that are just as resistant to electrical charge as they are to the Dark Side of the Force.
It’s not her first attempt at using technology to reach young people. She’s been known to make soap bubbles in her spare time, and according to her LinkedIn feed, she recently fabricated a family of polar bears for a girl who lost her brother in a car accident. “I made two larger ones to represent mom and dad and seven smaller ones that are engaged in various activities to represent kids doing kid things—entirely unaware of the fact that the family had seven children. I was told that the girl was overjoyed.”
That’s how Dr. O rolls. After earning her master’s degree in Physical Chemistry at Perm State University in Russia, she pursued her Ph.D. at Kentucky’s University of Louisville. The school awarded Ivanova a Ph.D. for her thesis, titled “Size and Composition Dependent Electrochemical Oxidation and Deposition of Metal Nanostructures.” She said that working on her Ph.D. forced her to step out of her comfort zone. In her case, it meant setting aside studying bulk parts and “big stuff” to research the mechanics of the ultra-small.
It turned out to be a wise decision. While looking for a postdoctoral position, Ivanova responded to an advertisement from Virginia Tech; the university was looking for someone with expertise in nanocomposites for 3D printing.
“I had plenty of experience with nanocomposites but no clue on 3D printing,” she laughed. “Additive manufacturing wasn’t even a term back then. So I Googled it. I watched some YouTube videos and looked at all the parts people were making, and I thought, ‘This is so cool. I want to be part of it.’ So I applied for the job.”
That was in 2011, and Ivanova has continued to push the boundaries of her chosen field ever since. Working under the tutelage of Tom Campbell, research associate professor and associate director for outreach of Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, and co-advisor Chris Williams, director of Virginia Tech’s DREAM lab, she spent the next two years or so developing nanocomposites for use in additive manufacturing. She set up a laboratory to synthesize semiconducting nanocrystals made of cadmium selenide, better known as “quantum dots,” then found ways to inkjet-print them.
The good thing about additive manufacturing is that you can print practically anything, she explained. The bad thing is that it’s also fairly easy for anyone with a machine to produce illegitimate copies of these items, then sell them as genuine. This leaves one of the most promising technologies of our time rife for fraud.
“Because they fluoresce when exposed to UV (ultraviolet) light, quantum dots are often used in the biosciences to tag cancer cells, for example,” Ivanova said. “Our goal at Virginia Tech was to develop the technology to 3D print them. It was seen as a way to prevent counterfeiting, using quantum dots as a type of barcode that’s invisible to the human eye.”
By the end of Ivanova’s term there, she had written six peer-reviewed articles on these and other topics, and contributed to a host of 3D printing conference proceedings.
Following her stint in academia, Ivanova went into the private sector, and for the next five years focused her energies on the macroworld over the micro. As a scientist for Texas-based government contractor Lynntech, she managed a number of novel research projects, among them the development of UV-curable silicones for use in neonatal medical devices, culminating in the tracheostomy tubes mentioned earlier. There was the HAMMER project, in which Ivanova used a custom-built printer with an “unconventional energy source” to fuse test specimens made of polymers like polyamide-11 and metals such as iron and copper. And she explored ways to additively manufacture uniforms and undergarments on Navy ships, developing new materials that replicate textiles and techniques to adjust the strand spacing for improved breathability in 3D-printed fabrics.
One of Ivanova’s favorite (and loudest) projects was also for the Navy, which focused on developing a more capable pyrotechnic flare for military aircraft. The traditional MTV flare they were using contained just one flammable material—magnesium—it could only create a single infrared (IR) signature; given recent advancements in electronics, the Navy had determined that decoy flares were becoming easier to outsmart. What better way to create one with multiple materials (and therefore multiple IR signatures) than to 3D print it?
“Many of the powders I worked with were flammable and in some cases quite explosive, so we collaborated with Texas A&M University, which has facilities for safely testing such materials,” Ivanova said. “And due to its high melting temperature, there was no commercial way to print the Teflon used in MTV, at least not at that time. We actually had to modify the chemical composition to make it extrudable. It was challenging work, but it was also a lot of fun printing and then setting off these little kabooms in my lab. It was like making fireworks.”
Her next endeavor was with Universal Technology Company, now ARCTOS, in Dayton, Ohio. Here again, she was involved in numerous America Makes and DoD-sponsored research and development projects—Ivanova developed a handful of “recipes” for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) feedstocks, and produced a variety of nozzles, impellers, and turbine blades for aerospace and military use.
She also got to be good friends with PANDA, the metal 3D-printing system that she used there and whose manufacturing has since been spun off into a separate company: Open Additive in Beaver Creek, Ohio. One might argue that her experiences with that machine helped cement her love of additive manufacturing. Ivanova referred to one of the parts she made with it as “ginormous, sumptuous, glamorous, and splendiferous”—which is very high praise for a hunk of metal.
As noted earlier, Ivanova currently serves as director of technology at Mechnano. It’s a company where she can apply her love of 3D printing to the furtherance of her first darling: nanotechnology. Even better, Mechnano’s address is in sunny Mesa, Ariz., allowing her to stay warm enough—almost—to fend off her constant case of the chills. “I’m cold all the time,” she laughed. “Walk into our office and I’ll be the only one wearing a hoodie.”
Mechnano founder and CEO Steve Lowder agrees on both counts. “Whether it’s printing Groots and Polar Bears for youth, volunteering at area food banks, or painting small homes for families in transition, Olga illustrates the goodness and care for others that each of us should strive for—these are qualities that our business culture wholeheartedly supports.”
Mechnano is a materials company. It develops and manufactures master-batches and formulations for use in 3D printing feedstocks using discrete carbon nanotubes. It’s here that Ivanova hands out 3D-printed Yodas—ones that are not static dissipative, anyway—to young people interested in manufacturing. And it’s here that she spends her days quite literally unraveling the mysteries of carbon nanotubes.
“Ever since their discovery nearly thirty years ago, carbon nanotubes have offered enormous promise,” she said. “They have extremely high tensile strength, are very light, and their electrical conductivity is roughly one-thousand times that of copper. For these and other reasons, the government has poured billions of dollars into their development. The challenge, however, is that when you synthesize carbon nanotubes, they take on an agglomerated bundled state, so you can’t harness their unique properties. Our intellectual property centers around untangling those bundles.”
Ask Ivanova how she goes about this unlikely task, and she’ll just smile and politely decline. “I can’t tell you much about that, except to say we’re having great success.”
Despite her understandable reluctance to discuss proprietary technology, Ivanova is clearly fascinated by all things infinitesimal, with carbon nanotubes and nanocomposites at the top of the list. “It’s groundbreaking work, especially in the context of additive manufacturing,” she said. “Think about it. Many of the current challenges here come down to material selection. Maybe it’s not strong enough, or it’s not conductive, or it can’t resist high temperatures—pick your property. Many companies have looked to ceramics and composites as a means to break that barrier, and some have enjoyed increased material performance as a result. I see discrete carbon nanotubes and other nano-engineered materials as the next frontier, and think we’ve only started to scratch the surface of what’s possible.”
When not peeking beneath the covers of the atomic universe, Ivanova keeps a close eye on the additive industry. As many of those who call her Dr. O will attest, she’s keenly interested in all aspects of 3D printing, and is amazed at the technology’s rapid and continuous growth.
“You have to keep learning and digging and look at what others are doing if you want to keep up with it all,” she said. “For example, when I visit trade shows like RAPID + TCT and Formnext, I make it a point to stop by every booth whose name I don’t recognize. I look back at the state of the industry as it was when I first graduated and am blown away by the advancements. The cat’s definitely out of the bag.”
