Special Interest Group meeting on advanced precision in Additive Manufacturing
March 26, 2019
The European Society for Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology (euspen), based in Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK, will host a Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting on advanced precision in Additive Manufacturing at the Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France, from September 16–18, 2019.
This SIG will represent the 6th time that euspen has collaborated with the American Society of Precision Engineering (ASPE) on issues surrounding precision in AM, which it believes is a crucial focus if the technology is to become truly integrated onto the factory floor and fulfil expectations as a serial production tool.
The SIG meeting will focus on some of the most fertile areas for R&D in the AM technology at the moment, including dimensional accuracy and surface finish for AM, design for precision, designing and characterising machines, standardisation, the integration of AM into overall holistic manufacturing processes, engineering partnerships between AM and secondary finishing operations (post-processing) and metrology.
Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) is one of the most discussed topics relating to AM today, and will reportedly be addressed throughout the meeting. The SIG will also look at what needs to be considered in terms of post-processing and the effect on precision and surface finish if overly complex or assembled products are manufactured.
As the AM sector matures, it is also necessary to characterise the performance of AM machines, focusing on in-situ process monitoring, in-process measurement, and process feedback and correction, all of which will be discussed at the event, along with the subject of AM standards, a crucial part of the evolution of the technology from a prototyping tool to a tool for the mass-production of end-use parts.
The SIG will incorporate a half day of presentations from PAM2 (Precision Additive Metal Manufacturing). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 721383.
The hosts and organising committee for SIG are Prof Alain Bernard from Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France; Dr David Bue Pedersen from Technical University of Denmark, Denmark; Prof Richard Leach from University of Nottingham, UK; and Dr John Taylor from University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. The meeting chairs are Prof Leach and Dr Taylor.
