Phase3D targets volume metal AM inspection with standardized production
Phase3D is going through a transition period in relation to the operations connected to the metal additive inspection business. Namely, it intends to change from customization to standard manufacturing and to increase the amount of the software layer above the measurement data. The latest financing round attracted the attention of the company for exactly these reasons hardware manufacturing, software and data science, and deployments.
This step is very significant for American additive manufacturing as a whole, because the in-situ inspection is recognized as a technology necessary for industrial metal powder bed fusion, while large-scale hardware production is another manufacturing challenge. An effective solution for in-situ inspection, proven in the pilot stage, is quite different from the in-situ inspection hardware, which can be manufactured and deployed successfully and repeatedly with the appropriate software workflows.
Phase3D’s main product is called Fringe Inspection. It is based on the structured light metrology and takes the heightmaps of each layer of the metal powder bed fusion process. In other words, it gives the geometrical insight into the manufacturing process, not the result of it.
According to the company, its customers use such information in order to assess powder bed homogeneity, recoater interactions, spatter deposition and internal geometry of manufactured parts. Its mechanical importance is quite obvious: the quality of metal AM process greatly depends on the conditions of the layers and process repeatability. Each layer’s surface condition is the condition of the next one. Therefore, any metrological system, which can track those changes, will address one of the biggest challenges of metal AM: variability.
Indeed, this challenge is recognized widely among manufacturing facilities in the USA. As NIST claims in its Measurement Science for Additive Manufacturing program, predictable and repeatable operation, machine performance characterization, powder layer measurement, in-process sensing, and AM data integration are among the key obstacles to the adoption of metal additive manufacturing. In other words, the requirement is not to provide the additional sensors, but metrological solutions, which will help to control machine health and process.
That is why Phase3D’s business model is so important. As stated by COO and CFO Ben Ferrar, the company focuses on providing the reliable and repeatable measurements for metal additive manufacturing, as well as on deploying the products, which will allow the customers to work with the obtained metrological data. The next step, according to him, will be scaling up the manufacturing in order to make the company the industry standard in in-situ inspection.
It is the right path toward the goal of production, not the demonstration. Metal AM users in aerospace, defense and other regulated sectors do not need any anomaly images and dashboards. They need the traceable data which will help them to control process, ensure its repeatability and make decisions regarding the parts’ acceptability. Literature review on the metal AM process qualification and certification reveals that inspection and testing are critical barriers to the wide adoption of the process, especially in aerospace, where repeatability, traceability and documented process control play the role of the qualification efforts.
It does not mean, however, that the in-situ monitoring should replace the post-build inspection. It must not, as it is stated by the literature review on the metal AM qualification and certification. The in-situ monitoring cannot replace the physical validation, witness coupons and final inspection. Moreover, the defect acceptance criteria for AM have not been harmonized yet. Nevertheless, the layer-by-layer monitoring can be added to the evidence chain, help to track process drifts and increase the context of build quality. It might even reduce the level of the uncertainties which need to be addressed at the last stage of the process.
Phase3D states that it currently has 25 enterprise customers in aerospace, defense and industrial markets, as well as active collaborations with NASA, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. As the metrology supplier, such customers usually require not only good sensors, but also their reliable deployment, data handling and support on different machines and production environments.
Thus, the company’s decision to change its strategy from customization to the standard manufacturing at scale is not only the internal operational issue. It is the test of whether the in-situ AM inspection can become the separate repeatable product category. The standardized builds normally imply the better manufacturing control, the more stable baseline for the installation and more opportunities to ensure the comparability of the software output across various sites. For the inspection hardware, this consistency is as important as the sensing capability.
Phase3D has also appointed Ray Farrell to its board. Although the intellectual property strategy and commercialization experience are secondary here, they also contribute to the same transition: once the sensing platform becomes the product rather than the customized deployment, it becomes crucial to protect its technical stack and promote it systematically.
The main point is quite simple. Metal additive manufacturing will never reach the volume production due to the machine capabilities alone. Metal AM will become the volume production only when the measurement, data handling and decision-making processes will become more standardized than the builds themselves. Phase3D is now trying to industrialize this inspection layer, and this is the issue worth watching.
By Edward Collins – Senior editor for AMI’s performance systems and mechanical design coverage, focused on powertrains, drivetrain systems, manufacturing precision, materials, and high-performance engineering.
