Conversations around quality in metal additive manufacturing often focus on the flashy application of high-frequency, in situ, real-time monitoring systems and the neural networks or machine learning required for map-reduction of the mountains of data generated. There is, however, an often-overlooked aspect of consistently making high-quality parts: calibration.

Almost every industry has seen explosive growth in additive manufacturing (AM or 3D printing) of metal components, either for prototyping or low to medium volume manufacture of often high value and safety critical parts.

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is a rapidly growing trend in the manufacturing world. The benefits of additive manufacturing are very attractive, ranging from the ease of implementing design changes to eliminating the need for fasteners and assembly.

Additive manufacturing has moved far beyond its prototyping roots. Today, additive for production applications is a growing area of interest.

Additive manufacturing continues to grow. The number of applications are on the rise, along with additive research. At this time last year, Paul Brackman was the only person working in the Zeiss Knoxville lab—today, he’s one of four full-time Zeiss staff at the lab, along with a team working in additive software applications at the Minneapolis headquarters, and a dedicated hardware team in Germany working on additive.

Medical device implants have become increasingly more complex over time as technology has progressed into providing a new way of construction by the means of 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing. 

Quality control of products with metal-based materials can be challenging, from working with recycled metals to the rise of additive manufacturing (AM).

So, what do we mean when we talk of post-process monitoring? Quite simply, it is the process used to monitor both the process and the finished product against their specifications, which include logging process routines and results in order to inform the machining and finalizing of the product.

Today’s design and manufacturing world is quickly evolving to a model-based environment, one where intelligent 3D CAD models are the authority, containing not only the information to build a part or assembled product, but also to verify the end result against the nominal 3D CAD design. 

Two-dimensional and 3D X-ray technologies are among the most useful nondestructive testing methods. They enable the inspection of an object’s internal features without having to disassemble the sample or destroy the part in the process.