Recently, a colleague of mine and I exhibited at the Additive Manufacturing Users Group, AMUG, 2018. It was a great exhibition and we brought our smallest CT Scanner, the exaCT XS, with us. We scanned customer parts and demo parts live. It was a great opportunity for me to talk to actual AM users and listen to their successes, challenges, and concerns. Thank you again to everyone who stopped by.
We will also be going to RAPID+TCT (Booth 518). One of the quality related talks at the show, Additive Manufacturing (AM) Changes Quality Assurance Processes, will be presented by Heiko Wenzel-Schinzer, Professor, University of Applied Sciences Merseburg.
“AM has been increasingly used in prototyping and model construction, but also in individual and serial production. This radically changes the business processes involved in development, logistics and production. The reliable and sustainable quality assurance of individual parts and the final product is increasingly influenced by AM as well. Over the next few years, the use of metrological solutions (e.g. computed tomography (CT)) will speed up the pace, installed inline or near to the production line. The gained measurement data must be processed promptly and automatically, in order to meet the industry 4.0 scenarios requirements of many companies.”
In the field of metrology, the impact made by additive manufacturing on how we manufacture products, cascades to how we measure them. This creates challenges for metrology companies to find solutions to measure new types and designs, of customers parts. Although not a new technology, the continued adaption of 5-Axis CNC machining centers, Additive Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, will certainly shape part of what manufacturing will become in the future. Providing data back to manufacturing, no matter how the part is created is an important first step.
One of things we want to help share with the community is how people are using AM today and what they may think about it’s uses in the future. We have created a survey that we would like you to take. Our hope is that we can share the results with everyone, next month.
For some of you, the future can’t wait. That’s why we are bringing our systems, exaCT S and exaCT XS to the show, where will perform live demonstrations. Not long ago the versatility, power, and accuracy of these desktop CT systems were a promise for the future. At RAPID you will see that these are now the tools of today. Please feel free to stop by booth #518, check out the machines, and get your part scanned!
