Quality manufacturing has well established heritage, principles, behaviors, and practices however, people are having difficulty applying them to additive manufacturing. Perhaps some of the confusion is a result of the newness and complexity of additive manufacturing. A point that is commonly made is that additive manufacturing combines material creation with product fabrication but the many connections to quality manufacturing requirements are incomplete. When a foundry makes a product feedstock such as billet, plate, or bar stock there are material certifications that accompany that material verifying that the feedstock meets critical industry requirements. These certs are a fundamental basis in the quality lifecycle. It is important to consider that when additive manufacturing is used to create material, the same level of quality certification must be achieved to satisfy customer requirements. This is just the beginning of the quality lifecycle and there are many other downstream quality requirements that must be met to achieve product adoption.
This presentation will use traditional foundry-based manufacturing methods as a basis for understanding the requirements of product manufacturing and extend them to additive manufacturing. Analogies, translations, and connections between castings, forgings, and billet with multi-step manufacturing operations to create final products will be presented as case study examples to better understand how the heritage of quality manufacturing has established expectations for manufacturing. Specific standards, codes, and technical publications will be explained as reference for these legacy manufacturing methods and then mirrored for two quality manufacturing pathways for additive manufactured components (one commercial and one Federal Government). Attendees will gain an understanding of the relationships to heritage quality manufacturing practices and insight into industrial customer expectations for product acceptance.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the quality manufacturing requirements for traditional foundry-based manufacturing
- Describe the analogous quality manufacturing requirements for additive
- List three standards for product acceptance of additive manufactured products.
