Standards organization ASTM International and America Makes have compiled and released a strategic guide for additive manufacturing data that identifies gaps, challenges, solutions and action plans. Published by ASTM International’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE), the guide consists of content derived from a workshop on AM data management hosted by ASTM International and America Makes in December 2019.
The event brought together over 100 experts from across government, industry and academia to discuss and present topics related to data management in AM. Vital data, acquired using digital data acquisition, machine learning and artificial intelligence, can help to advance additive manufacturing. At this point, however, ASTM International believes this potential has not been fully exploited.
“A key and large gap in the development of an AM data ecosystem is how to easily and securely generate, store, analyze, and share critical and vital data,” explained Mohsen Seifi, Ph.D, ASTM International’s director of global additive manufacturing programs. “A sub-gap is the consistency of the data that is gathered across multiple groups.”
The AM data strategic guide therefore aims to address not only the importance of data management, but also how the AM industry can move forward by leveraging AM data in innovative ways.
Mahdi Jamshidinia, Ph.D., ASTM International’s additive manufacturing R&D project manager, said: “This strategic guide attempts to address series of gaps and provide solutions and potential action plans to address the gaps. The guide provides a summary of discussions during the workshop and can be used by all industry stakeholders and AM experts who want to participate in the development of an AM data ecosystem and contribute to standardization.”
“The guide highlights the importance of data management and data principles which will benefit the broader AM supply chain, and will serve as a resource to strengthen collaboration and ease the challenges common to AM data sharing,” added Brandon Ribic, Technology Director of America Makes. “We are grateful to all who worked on this effort and believe this guide compliments the efforts of the AMSC and America Makes’ technology maturation strategic objectives.”
AM CoE has also released an accompanying video (above), which dives into the important role data management plays in additive manufacturing and the challenges it presents. The data associated with AM covers the entire life cycle, from powders and raw materials, to design and DfAM, to inspection and validation. This means that it accounts for many terabytes (even zettabytes) of data, which needs to be managed efficiently and smartly.
To address data management in AM, ASTM International has also created a new subcommittee on data (F42.08), which will develop and perform value-stream mapping to identify the needs, processes, tools, opportunities and dependencies needed for a complete digital thread understanding. The subcommittee will be chaired by Alex Kitt, Ph.D., Product Manager at EWI.
