AM Production Facility Challenges with 3-DP Processing Control and Quality Management
After working with some of the largest AM facilities in the U.S. and Germany for the past two years we have documented the primary AM processing requirements and shortcomings.
We will present some of the requirements that are unique to an AM production facility, such as:
- Proper Work Order generation
- Build Plate management/ID Functions
- Serialization for Multiple Parts printed on the same Build Plate
- Nonconformances/Advanced Dispositioning
- Serial number tracking of all parts throughout the process
- Tracking the reality on the floor: Sequential, out of sequence and multiple possible routes
- Managing outside vendors and transactions within the build process
- Tracking machine time and labor time
- Managing material usage for each build, and reclassification of used material (i.e. virgin, 1x, 2x)
- Collecting Quality Data during Production and in the Testing Lab
- Connecting/viewing specifications, operating instructions, and QMS documents directly from the production floor
- Using specifications to automatically qualify equipment, operators, or vendors, to prevent improper processing of the parts.
- Defining and generating new work order “packages” to make repeat work order part builds rapidly added
NOTE: During the early part of the presentation we would ask the attendees to jot down 1 or 2 of their processing headache areas, pass them to the aisles, and then we can respond to them with some processing ideas during the last few minutes of the presentation.
Since we have learned a lot over the past two years about the best ways to manage the additive manufacturing steps associated with a Part (all the way from order entry to Part delivery) we would welcome the opportunity to share this information and have open discussion with the AEROMAT 19 attendees to address some of their concerns.