Holistic Quality Control for AM Process Chain: Enabling Rapid Transition from Prototyping to Production

Additive manufacturing is being adopted into various aspects of manufacturing, primarily due to freedom to create complex designs and economic advantages of producing a small number of parts without the need for tooling. However, the move from prototyping to production requires greater understanding and control of several variables such as stricter dimensional tolerances, surface roughness, defects and microstructure control. While OEMs, service bureaus, and universities are addressing the process controls to limit variation in part quality, ZEISS is working on another aspect of developing holistic measurement methods to quantify the effects of these process controls called ZEISS Blueline. This approach utilizes a multi-scale, multi-modal workflow, designed to handle the complexity of the entire AM process chain, starting from raw materials to the finished parts.