Sigma Labs Inc (SASI)

[GetRich1day]

I've seen this mentioned a few times lately that there is no need for independent validation or third party or objective compliance. I disagree with that sentiment. Third party validation and objective compliance are very necessary for customers who need critical AM parts. Here's what the AM experts say.

Powder Bed Material Testing

Many of the additive manufacturing technologies use powder (metal or plastic) as the starting material. This offers opportunities for independent testing of these powder (first time and reused) materials to insure that they meet specifications. First time use materials need to satisfy three parameters (size, shape and distribution). The general shape of the particles should be spherical, the size should be 20 or 50 microns depending on the layer thickness and the distribution should be as tight as possible around size and shape. There should also be testing on the material composition of these powders. Reused powders need to be kept clean and free from oxidation in order to be comparable to the “virgin” powder in performance. This offers opportunities for independent testing of unused and reused powder to insure that there has been no degradation in material characteristics that will affect the performance.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/additive-manufacturing-aerospace-opportunities-puerto-carrero-phd

As reported by an interviewee, one challenge with AM
technology relates to “objective evidence of compliance to
design intent.” When a part is extracted from a machine, it
needs to be evaluated to determine whether it meets the
design intent. The surface geometry can be analyzed, but there
is no nondestructive methodology for determining whether the
metal chemistry meets design specifications. A firm can
produce a part, but how does one inspect and validate it?

As a well
-respected
senior engineer at a leading aerospace firm noted during an
interview with RTI, AM needs “objective evidence of compliance
to design intent. When you pull a part out of the machine, how
do you know it meets its design intent?” According to another
respondent in the same industry, “[you need] empirical
evidence of success to build customer confidence.” This is the
ultimate goal for AM: achieving a level of confidence that a part
be almost certainly free of deformations and functionally sound,
while adhering to design standards and guidelines.
http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/gcr/2016/NIST.GCR.16-006.pdf

Wide-spread implementation and adoption of this or similar, open communication paradigms for PBF will enable researches to advance the science of additive manufacturing, end-users to integrate third-party quality monitoring systems, and enable the development of manufacturer
and third-party add-on tools.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Neal Orringer, Joseph Razum, and Sandeep Rana from 3D Systems, Dr. Suresh Sundarraj and Dr. George Levesque from Honeywell, and Dr. Sung Park from Northrop Grumman.
This work was supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory through America Makes under agreement number FA8650-12-2-7230.
https://sffsymposium.engr.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/2016/005-Dunbar.pdf