Additive Assurance
David Menzies, Chief Commercial Officer at Additive Assurance
"Quality control, process optimisation and scalability" are three critical challenges for quality assurance in additive manufacturing, according to Dr David Menzies, Chief Commercial Officer at Additive Assurance.
In an interview with TCT Magazine, Menzies shared how technologies such as Additive Assurance's AMiRIS in situ process monitoring solution are helping to support the adoption of industrial 3D printing in production applications by addressing key challenges around real-time monitoring, collection and analysis of process data, and consistency when scaling operations.
"Quality is a paramount concern for all manufacturers regardless of the processes that they use to generate their products," Menzies told TCT. "Significant investments are made to ensure that quality irregularities can be identified as early as possible in manufacturing processes. The cost of the lost production time and raw materials vs the profitability of the production run dictate how much investment is needed and at what stage of the production process to mitigate this risk."
Additive Assurance specialises in the development of process monitoring and quality assurance solutions for laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing. Its AMiRIS product is an independent in situ process monitoring add-on which can be fitted to most L-PBF printers and uses a suite of near infrared optical sensors to glean real-time insights during the build process.
"As additive manufacturing transitions from prototyping to production applications, and for the further expansion of the industries that are served, technologies like AMiRIS play a critical role in supporting this adoption by addressing several key challenges. These include quality control, process optimisation and scalability," Menzies said.
Additive Assurance recently announced a partnership with Dutch metal additive manufacturing company Additive Industries to integrate AMiRIS into its portfolio of MetalFab 3D printers. Menzies went on to describe the current "perfect storm for the industry to grow further" as metal AM hardware vendors, customers and inspection system providers establish collaborations to bring "more integrated solutions that meet the ultimate customers’ needs" to the production floor.
"In laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M), some production runs can last for a significantly long time compared to traditional processes," Menzies explained. "As such, detection of a likely failure early in the process presents a benefit to such circumstances. This creates the need from a productivity perspective, especially in circumstances where the profitability of production is thin. Lost time and materials in these circumstances have a large impact on financial performance, and any new methods to mitigate this are of clear interest to manufacturers. With increasing adoption of PBF-LB/M, more low profitability production is being opened up and at the other end of the spectrum higher quality requirement production is also increasing."
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