Metal Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is one of the most quickly growing paradigms in today’s manufacturing landscape. Within additive manufacturing, metal powder bed fusion is one of the most popular process technologies, capable of producing metal parts featuring geometries that have never been possible using subtractive manufacturing or forming. However, with new manufacturing technologies come new challenges for metrologists, and metal additive surfaces are some of the most complex ever seen by the surface measurement and characterisation community. In this Chapter, the characterisation challenges present in the metal additive case are covered, by first examining good practice in metal additive surface characterisation. Then, two case studies are presented, examining methods for understanding internal surface measurement using X-ray computed tomography and feature-based surface characterisation, respectively. In the first of these case studies, methods for validating X-ray computed tomography data through comparison to other surface measurement technologies are provided. In the latter case study, common metal additive surface features and example automated methods developed to characterise these features are presented.