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For AM to take a greater hold on the industries it’s poised to impact, there are certain angles to smooth out and one of those is certifications. Early adopters of additive production such as aerospace and medical are rightly picky about its certifications and the AM community is making sure to have its own record straight. Safety certifications are the highest priority in this regard and Lockheed Martin’s facility in Sunnyvale, California now holds the first UL certified in the world. Govt. bodies are also moving to help a wider audience to stay within standards, like Health Canada’s newest draft guidance on AM medical devices. However, the main reason why certifications are difficult is that AM is still not an exact science. With fast and multi-spectrum monitoring technologies, we are starting to see what happens during the process. However, certain aspects of the physics behind it are full of variables we don’t understand.
Lockheed Martin extends additive manufacturing to key spacecraft components
Lockheed Martin’s Additive Design and Manufacturing Center in Sunnyvale, California, where the company produces military, commercial and civil space technology, attained a comprehensive safety certification.
“We are the first UL certified additive manufacturing facility in the world,” Servando Cuellar, Lockheed Martin Space Systems engineering senior manager, told SpaceNews.
Read more here.
Health Canada Drafts Policies on 3D-Printed Implantable Devices
Health Canada released draft guidance Thursday to aid manufacturers in preparing license applications for implantable medical devices produced by additive manufacturing or 3D-printing. The guidance “represents the first phase of 3D-printing policy in Canada” because Health Canada intends to continuously adapt its policies to emerging issues on the topic “due to the fast-changing technological environment,” the regulator said.
Read the full article here.
High-Speed Cameras Used to Monitor 3D Printing Process
3D printing, particularly laser-powder bed fusion or L-PBF, requires a great deal of monitoring to avoid defects and flaws in the final parts. In a thesis entitled “Process Monitoring for Temporal-Spatial Modeling of Laser Powder Bed Fusion,” a student named Animek Shaurya studies the use of high-speed video cameras for in-situ monitoring of the 3D printing process of nickel alloy 625 to detect meltpool, splatter, and over melting regions to improve the quality of the print.
Read more here.
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