DigiAM - Faster Adoption of Additive Manufactoring by Digitalization of Qaulity Assurance and Material Stock

In terms of product customization and light weight design the AM industry has shown its superiority over conventional manufacturing methods. However, with respect to component quality, production cost and productivity, AM processes have yet to improve in order to compete with conventional manufacturing methods. This has led to a slow adoption of AM by Swedish firms. The project faces the aforementioned challenges and tackles them with the aid of further digitalization of the AM process and production system.

Focus is placed on:

1) digitalization of the quality assurance and

2) digitalization of component stock. Regarding quality assurance, the monitoring solutions included in AM equipments do not have the precision required for detection of fine defects and currently, the AM industry depends heavily on separate non-destructive or mechanical testing.

The project aims to introduce new in-process monitoring methods using high-end systems and sensors for layer-by-layer data acquisition and evaluation. Furthermore, for products that necessitate post AM operations application of robotized 3D scanners will be investigated. The measurements collected during in-process and post-process monitoring will be compiled in a digital format which is to serve as a digital certification of the AM component.

The second part of the project focuses on digitalization of components for AM and evaluates the economical and environmental benefits of this concept. For this purpose capabilities of the latest 3D scanners and reverse engineering software for creating CAD models will be analyzed.