TCT
Additive Manufacturing Solutions (AMS) debuted a new piece of software at TCT 3Sixty, designed to manage internal powder usage.
The UK-based metal additive manufacturing specialist says Powder Pro was built in-house to deliver a more streamlined approach to powder management, providing a full history of material from powder to part.
Speaking with the team on the show floor, the software was developed by a team of two in just two months to combine all material data – typically stuck on spreadsheets – into one relational system that is easy to use and monitors material usage, loss, loss rate, machine status and more, providing full traceability of the material.
Demoing Powder Pro in Birmingham last week, the whole lifecycle of the powder can be seen via a simple dashboard that provides a visual understanding, through straightforward graphs and batch trees, of what has happened to the powder in a lot. Through its batches dashboard, you can see which material is in which container, its location, the current weight of that material, how many times its been through a cycle, and indicate whether your supply is running low. You can also see all relevant certificates and any test data linked to that material.
"This isn't something where you just put data in, leave it and view it," Joe Rowbottom, Systems Engineer at Additive Manufacturing Solutions told TCT. "You want the software to drive what the user will do. So when we go through adding certifications, we want it to signify to the user that after X amount of runs, we should probably do a new qualification. And after any merge batch, you should be re-qualifying new powder. But we also want it get to the point where, if we have a build that's going to run, and we have a lots [system], if we've been given a spec that the build needs to have 99% density, it should tell us that powder won't be any good. So the idea is to create a model where we can use the user's data and our own data to allow us to make a predictive outcome of, this powder will not satisfy the needs of this build. Choose lot one, lot two, lot three."
AMS has been using the software internally so far but the overall ambition it to commercialise it for external customers. It is still in the early stages of development and AMS is currently working on integrating it fully into its own workflow but the feedback at the show last week, Rowbottom tells TCT, has been positive so far.
“ It's crucial to us because we needed the traceability from step zero to part. So we need to see the whole lifecycle of the powder," Rowbottom explained. "There are other applications out there, but I don't think they handle the recycling of the powder in the best way. With a lot system, it allows you to see this powder has been run this many times, but it's more the predictive stuff that will be, this is why we're doing it, this is our end goal. Our idea is to get some of the main functionality down and then we can start developing the extra bits. But the predictive stuff will be the reason that this is worth doing.”
