Over the last few decades, additive manufacturing (AM) has fundamentally changed the way that manufacturers approach product development. AM is a uniquely disruptive technology. Twenty-five to thirty years ago, it changed the manufacturing paradigm by altering the way that manufacturers produced prototypes. Today, it is disrupting the way that manufacturers produce end-use parts and components and is increasingly seen as a truly viable production technique. Now the conversation among manufacturers is around the most judicious use of AM for production, its advantages, where the sweet spot is in terms of production volumes, key opportunities, and barriers to entry. Many of these barriers relate to precision quality control of AM parts, which challenge traditional methods of surface metrology.
With the focus today being on the use of AM for production, the analysis of the accuracy and repeatable tolerance attainment of AM has become a far more critical issue. For production applications, unlike prototyping, just “good enough” is no longer acceptable. If an AM part is integral to a safety critical aerospace or medical application, it is essential to achieve dimensional and material tolerance targets consistent with design intent. It is here that the role of metrology to validate the quality of finished parts is so important.
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