ASTM launches Manufacturing Unlimited video series
ASTM International has launched Manufacturing Unlimited, a video series hosted by manufacturing journalist Peter Zelinski that examines the facilities, technologies and companies putting advanced manufacturing technologies into production.
Manufacturing Unlimited is produced by ASTM International as an extension of its International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing (ICAM), hosted by the ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence. Through visits to manufacturing facilities, the series extends ICAM’s focus on standardisation, qualification, certification, data, materials and workforce development beyond the annual conference.
For the metal AM industry, this includes questions surrounding process control, data collection and analysis, qualification, production scalability and quality assurance.
One episode sees Zelinski visit CADmore Metal, Columbia, South Carolina, USA, where Cold Metal Fusion Additive Manufacturing technology is used to produce metal parts with Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) machines typically associated with polymer AM.
The process uses a feedstock comprising metal powder and a binder to form parts, which subsequently undergo debinding and sintering to achieve their final metallic properties. As such, the technology represents a multi-step Additive Manufacturing process in which the initial operation establishes the geometry, followed by subsequent processing that consolidates the material.
The CADmore Metal episode examines how this approach could offer an alternative route to metal AM production, including the potential to reduce infrastructure and capital requirements and support more distributed production.
It also reflects ICAM’s focus on evaluating alternative process chains and emerging manufacturing technologies in the context of standards, material performance and industrial applications.
A second episode was filmed at ADDMAN’s facility in Statesville, North Carolina, USA, and focuses on the use of production data to improve statistical confidence in metal AM.
ADDMAN operates more than fifty metal PBF-LB Additive Manufacturing machines across multiple locations, including the former Keselowski Advanced Manufacturing facility in Statesville; Castheon in Thousand Oaks, California; and Hartwig in Rochester, New York. According to the company, this manufacturing footprint provides sufficient production history to analyse patterns and sources of variation across machines, materials, locations and builds, supporting greater statistical confidence as metal AM moves towards higher-volume production.
In the episode, Haley Cook, Senior Director of Operations at ADDMAN, discusses why quality methods established for conventional manufacturing cannot always be applied directly to Additive Manufacturing.
In metal AM, the manufacturing process simultaneously creates both the geometry and the material, while mechanical properties may be assessed through destructive testing of coupons produced alongside the parts. Sources of variation can include the AM machine, powder lot, geometry, thermal history and material response.
The episode also covers ADDMAN’s work with C103, a niobium-based refractory alloy used for demanding high-temperature applications, including space and hypersonic systems. With multiple machines dedicated to processing C103, ADDMAN reports that it generates thousands of build hours and tens of thousands of associated data points each year.
The subject reflects a broader shift in metal AM from demonstrating manufacturing capability towards establishing repeatability and confidence in production. Data, standards and qualifications are consequently becoming increasingly important as the technology moves towards scaled production.
