Shane Collins often hears people say that there aren’t any additive manufacturing standards. This is frustrating because he’s worked on additive standards for more than 10 years and there are dozens out now.

A paradigm shift, identified and coined by American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, is a fundamental change in the approach, concepts, and assumptions of a practice. 

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies continuously blaze the trail of what’s possible for part design. As such, reliably and accurately inspecting the latest parts has become increasingly complex.

Since the rise of additive manufacturing (AM) in the 2010s, many businesses across the world are now looking at this method of manufacturing to see where it can add benefits across the supply chain.

Conversations around quality in metal additive manufacturing often focus on the flashy application of high-frequency, in situ, real-time monitoring systems and the neural networks or machine learning required for map-reduction of the mountains of data generated. There is, however, an often-overlooked aspect of consistently making high-quality parts: calibration.

Almost every industry has seen explosive growth in additive manufacturing (AM or 3D printing) of metal components, either for prototyping or low to medium volume manufacture of often high value and safety critical parts.

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is a rapidly growing trend in the manufacturing world. The benefits of additive manufacturing are very attractive, ranging from the ease of implementing design changes to eliminating the need for fasteners and assembly.

Additive manufacturing has moved far beyond its prototyping roots. Today, additive for production applications is a growing area of interest.

Additive manufacturing continues to grow. The number of applications are on the rise, along with additive research. At this time last year, Paul Brackman was the only person working in the Zeiss Knoxville lab—today, he’s one of four full-time Zeiss staff at the lab, along with a team working in additive software applications at the Minneapolis headquarters, and a dedicated hardware team in Germany working on additive.

Medical device implants have become increasingly more complex over time as technology has progressed into providing a new way of construction by the means of 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing.