October 30, 2022 – AddUp, the French manufacturer of industrial-grade 3D printers, is partnering with Swedish software company Interspectral to bundle the latter’s development of AM Explorer with AddUp’s melt pool monitoring solution.
AddUp says it is developing an advanced data visualisation solution to reduce quality inspection costs and improve efficiency. The new solution will be available on all new AddUp equipped with melt pool monitoring systems worldwide.
In fact, back in March this year, AddUp released three pieces of its latest monitoring software (Dashboards, Recoat Monitoring, Meltpool Monitoring) in one go to improve the comprehensive performance of the FormUp 350 laser powder printer.
After introducing a multi-scale monitoring software, AddUp Dashboards, in February last year, along with a closed-loop powder bed monitoring solution, the company is now focused on developing a meltpool monitoring system for control and data analysis in large-scale metal 3D printing.
Based on multi-sensor hardware installed in the optical chain, the system tracks power and emissivity drift, as well as the physical location profile of the laser spot, in real time by achieving micron-level accuracy at each layer and customising the data set for different users. With this solution, the company explains, it is providing valuable insights to a wider range of 3D printing practitioners, such as quality specialists working on mass production.
Turning monitoring data into insight
Developed by Interspectral, AM Explorer is an OEM-agnostic 3D visualisation software that allows end users to create multi-channel digital twins based on the collection of design, simulation, monitoring and post-build part analysis data during the printing process.
Interspectral, an Industry 4.0 solutions provider, said that with the company’s proprietary software toolkit AM Explorer, it will provide users of metal-based additive manufacturing with digital simulation, monitoring and post-build part analysis data that will reduce manufacturing costs, improve quality and accelerate application development.
Isabelle Hachette, CEO of Interspectral, said: “This will be a major breakthrough for 3D printing manufacturing and the first deep integration of our multi-channel visualisation solution, AM Explorer, with a machine. Through this deep integration, we are able to optimize 3D printing productivity together.”
Equipment manufacturers are building 3D printing software strategies
We all know that the process of metal 3D printing often produces defects that result in waste as the overall part quality is not met. This makes process control and quality assurance through software particularly important. In the future, the software optimisation methods of the individual OEMs will become more defined. Such software becomes less important when the user only makes one-off parts or performs tests. Conversely, if 3D printing is to enter the real world of volume manufacturing, the industry will need monitoring systems like Link3D and 6 Sigma.