The Digital Flow of Information Drives the Industrialization of Additive Manufacturing towards Series Production

In the case of 3D-printed components, the prevailing opinion is often that the component quality and manufacturing costs prevent their use in series production. 3D printing often still has the image of prototyping. Farsoon wants to show that this view is outdated by presenting 3 new machines. Farsoon is committed to developing and supplying machines for series production using the powder bed process (metal & plastic).

The presentation will provide an overview of the state of the art in the industrial use of laser sintering and show which tasks still need to be solved. For example, the reproducibility of component quality is an issue. There is a lack of systematic understanding of the factors influencing the various steps in the process chains before, during and after the central step of component production in the laser sintering/melting system. There is a lack of quality assurance systems, for example for recording process data in the various process steps. Data processing is often complex due to a lack of software compatibility.

The presentation explains which requirements must be met in order for a component manufacturer to set up a quality assurance system that guarantees a certain degree of reproducibility in component production. Open laser sintering and melting systems expand the possibilities for setting up the necessary quality assurance systems for specific series production. The laser sintering systems should also be open for the connection of independent in-process quality control and for the transmission of process data.

The presentation will focus specifically on the description and explanation of the "Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture" (OPC UA) using an example, which makes it possible to systematically record, present, evaluate and positively influence the understanding of the respective influencing factors.