Data Management Tools for Metallic Additive Manufacturing

Metallic additive manufacturing (AM) processes offer the potential to fabricate components with internal modulation of both processing conditions and chemistry. This entails spatially-varying, process-related data including location-specific tool parameters, material property target values, scan paths, process data, and post-build material characterization results.Such data is critical for AM part calibration, validation, and qualification, especially in the aerospace sector.Existing CAD tools do not have the capability to acquire and manage the necessary spatially varying process data. Equipment-specific, proprietary software is employed to specify process parameters and to create scan paths based on geometry input from a CAD file, but this processing information is not typically available to designers or engineers for process optimization and qualification efforts.FTL's Volumetric AM Metadata Engine (VAME) provides an integrated software environment for tracking AM data from design through build and QA.