By Lauralyn McDaniel

Understanding additive manufacturing standards helps the AM community achieve reliable processes, including the critical design for AM. Several gaps between existing and needed standards for design were identified in the Additive Manufacturing Standardization Collaborative (AMSC) Standardization Roadmap for AM. In 2021, America Makes and ANSI brought together subject matter experts from industry, government, and academia for a discussion to lay the groundwork for further development and refinement of the DfAM aspects of the roadmap.

AM experts discussed the importance of design standards; sharing that design involves materials properties, meeting regulatory requirements, building confidence, as well as tools to communicate consistently and better education. Built into any consensus standard is experience of those who have identified best practices allowing everyone in the community to benefit from both their successes and failures.

Additional discussion included identifying how the needs for DfAM have changed in the last couple of years, why the needs are changing, how AM design standards different from more traditional manufacturing technologies, and the unique quality considerations, particularly with the progressively more complex designs enabled by AM. With all of this complexity, the participants also noted an increased availability and use of analytical and simulation tools specific to the design and workflow for AM.

A complete report on the workshop including slides and transcript are available on the ASMC website.

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