What absolutely baffles me about both GE and this part failure situation as well as Rolls-Royce investing 643 million dollars in mro operations,
Is that this was the major fear of additive Manufacturing going into production.
In many GE videos documenting their process they stress over and over again how important it was to them to ensure the quality of their parts.
Apparently, either the cost was too high or they neglected to use a high quality in process monitoring system, because thus far, all proven data on utilizing process parameters and correlating them to a compliant build have shown success in printing a verifiable part between 95 and 100% identical.
That's what Sigma labs software is capable of producing. It has been shown in multiple studies that using Sigma Labs technology can assure the quality of your product between 95% and 100%.
If GE was seriously using the cut and see method they mentioned last year, that is an extremely negligent process in terms of additive manufacturing and they well knew that.
If they simply did it because their in process monitoring software wasn't efficient as they thought, or they purposefully did it to save money and avoid post-process inspections, I would suspect some serious potential lawsuit implications coming their way.
There are many scientific studies that show each individual part during a build does not come out the same and a cut and see method would never work for additive manufacturing mass production.
GE definitely knew this and if they went along with that just to save money, I am absolutely appalled.
I believe that both of these instances are proof that companies using additive manufacturing for mass production without a high quality in process quality assurance software as part of their process, are at high risk for producing parts that will fail earlier than predicted.
This is why the most recent releases of Sigma Labs technology that directly correlate to porosity, geometric shape, and thermal emission parameters, as well as qualifying the powder material characteristics, is so extremely valuable to the industry.
With all the data that Sigma Labs provides to prove each individual part is printed correctly with material that is needed for the characteristics of the part while under high stress.
It is clear these turbine blades having early wear issues could very possibly be due to porosity or other negative characteristics that could be determined by proper monitoring of the weld pool or the process parameters of the AM machine itself.
I believe our recent private placement definitely solidifies that Sigma Labs may have been notified by certain companies or industry professionals, that they will be needing a number of print Rite 3D units in the near term future.
The entirety of 2017 and thus far in 2018 was a serious ramp-up in our personnel and software development.
Our recent collaborations with lzn for the commercialization of the am process as well as our collaboration with nist to qualify powder as well as parts...
Production contracts with Honeywell, aerojet Rocketdyne, Woodward, Siemens, Trumpf, additive Industries, solar turbines, as well as all our other ongoing collaborations projects and worldwide distribution...
I believe this hockey stick up-tick description of the movement of the industry into mass production is very accurate.
I firmly believe Sigma Labs as well positioned to be a leader in in process quality assurance of additive manufactured parts in a commercialization setting.
There's a lot of movement going on in the additive manufacturing industry especially with merger and acquisition as well as collaboration activity, I believe 2018 will be a very interesting year for Sigma labs and the industry as a whole.
Glta SGLB
