ASTM International developing new Additive Manufacturing standard
February 6, 2020
ASTM International’s Additive Manufacturing Technologies Committee (F42) is developing a standard that could help to quickly assess the quality of additively manufactured parts, as well as the performance of Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) machines.
F42 is comprised of 725 members and eight technical subcommittees, and all standards it develops are published in the Annual Book of ASTM Standards. The committee meets twice a year, with over 150 members attending two days of technical meetings.
The proposed standard aims to use off-the-shelf tools to quickly generate qualitative data related to dimensional accuracy and material strength, both of which serve as indicators of the health of the machine and the part. The committee welcomes representatives of industries, universities, and research facilities that work in AM technology to participate in the upcoming round-robin experiments to assess the robustness of the proposed standard (WK71395).
The technical point of contact for this standard’s development, Jonathan Pegues, of Sandia National Laboratories, explained that the standard could ultimately assist manufacturers, laboratories, government agencies and other stakeholders that produce L-PBF parts for structural applications. It is believed that the applicability of this method could potentially be extended to other Additive Manufacturing systems.
Nima Shamsaei, a founding member of ASTM International’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence, a professor in the mechanical engineering department at Auburn University and the Director of National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME), commented, “We are successfully working to capture variations in the Laser Powder Bed Fusion process. Now we need to determine the sensitivity of these variations and assess repeatability across various users, materials, and systems.”
