Automating Additive Manufacturing

May 15

With all the technology available in manufacturing, it’s surprising to still find areas that are not making heavy use of automation.

For example with end-of-line packaging robots and heat treatment operations, many manufacturing companies are using OEM equipment with these operations—but are not getting any data from (or into) these machines. While this powerful data can assist you with every aspect of process optimization, it’s real value comes from how it can help you get even more productive with the equipment you already have.

Often, additive manufacturing (3D printing) operations are not well integrated with manufacturing systems—especially MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems). These integrations are not very common for a number of reasons. On the other hand, there are many easy wins that come with integrating additive manufacturing systems (and the data from these operations). This post will explore both of these topics.

While we’re discussing additive manufacturing in this post, keep in mind that many of these ideas will also apply to OEM equipment in general, and may be useful in your manufacturing facility, even if your process is very different.

What is Additive Manufacturing?

In Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing, a machine creates complex 3D object by extruding layers of material that are bonded to each other. The simplest version of the process creates plastic objects from a spool of plastic filament. Imagine a very long but slim diameter glue stick in a hot glue gun creating a shape on a flat surface by stacking layers of hot glue which solidify after each pass.

More advanced versions of AM include processes that shine an ultraviolet light through a mask into liquid resin to create layers of hardened resin, and lasers that heat up powdered metal particles to fuse them into layers.

Compare these processes to “subtractive manufacturing”, more commonly called machining. Machining begins with a solid piece of stock material, then precise operations with a variety of cutting tools removes enough material until only the finished part remains.

Both additive and subtractive approaches are valid and have their strengths and weaknesses. Some manufacturing processes will use both approaches together by first creating a part with an additive process before post-processing by machining it to the required specifications.

A big benefit of AM is that you can design and fabricate parts that would otherwise be impossible with typical machining methods. You can also automate a lot of the processes without managing part fixturing. There are no spinning tools to avoid, and in many instances additive manufacturing is a much more efficient manufacturing process with less waste material.

Unfortunately, machines for additive manufacturing can be extremely expensive, and raw materials (especially for metals) can be expensive, hard to procure, and may not be as rigorously tested or certified compared to traditional materials for machined parts.

Why Isn’t Additive Manufacturing Integrated Yet?

Similar to robot arms, CNC machines, and other advanced OEM equipment, AM technology is relatively new in the context of manufacturing. For most automation platforms in use today, the first hurdle is that many of these machines aren’t controlled by industry standard PLC hardware.

Without tried and true hardware options, many of the industry standard communication protocols for automation won’t work unless the machine builder adds this functionality or provides access to the data through an API. The problem has been solved for CNC Controllers using the MTConnect framework, and many robot arm vendors offer some way to connect, usually via OPC-UA.

On the other hand, AM is a much more splintered industry with many companies still in the startup phase. These companies are focused on creating a functional product they can get to customers, so outside integration capabilities are simply a “nice to have.”

Another reason is that many companies are only using AM as a prototyping operation rather than as part of a full blown manufacturing line for finished products. These same companies aren’t usually concerned about integrating prototype data into their MES system. This is related to the first point that AM machines aren’t offering connectivity since it isn’t regarded as a priority yet. However, as more reliable advanced raw materials for aerospace applications are increasingly available, using AM as part of a manufacturing process is much less of a hurdle now than it was even five years ago.

Finally, many AM parts require significant post processing including cleaning, machining, and finishing—often with human intervention. Human interaction is one of the most difficult things to automate with any technology—and this is a big hurdle for integrating AM systems into an overall manufacturing operation.

What Are the Benefits of Integrating AM Systems?

With the previous challenges in this post in mind, we’ll take a top down approach for integrating AM systems into a manufacturing operation. These concepts will also apply to CNC and robot cells—along with any other technology that requires heavy human intervention or lacks overall connectivity.

Production Management

One of the most powerful components of an overall MES System is Production Scheduling. It allows you to manage how much work your machines are performing, when they are working, and what you are producing.

While it would be ideal to integrate with your AM machines to load the files you need to print, automatically start/stop each job, and get data from the machine for any alarms, maintenance issues (or otherwise keep the schedule updated in real time), you can still get at least 80% of a production schedule’s benefits with a fully manual operation.

Using a Production Scheduling tool will help you understand your overall machine utilization, know which machines are running where, and your overall capacity for meeting upcoming orders. This can be done with little to no integration with the machines themselves, although you can get even more benefits as you integrate machine data directly into your MES system.

Energy Monitoring

Another way to quickly improve your bottom line without direct machine integration is with an Energy Monitoring System. This will track the actual costs associated with running your equipment. Additionally, you’ll gain visibility into your overall machine efficiency and upcoming maintenance by tracking equipment power factor.

You can implement energy monitoring quickly and easily with the Opto 22 groov RIO Energy Monitoring Unit which will not require additional connectivity to your machines.

Quality

If you are making parts, you will also likely have a quality system. While you can get more information from your machines, you can also manage quality information.

In conjunction with your production scheduling system, you can use tools like the Ignition SCADA platform to capture and store all of your relevant quality information across your entire process. You can even integrate directly with many instruments in your lab to automatically collect data during tests.

While it will require some additional correlation, you can then compare your overall machine status and operating parameters to understand how your machines affect product quality over time.

Post Processing

Similar to managing quality, improving your post processing procedures (even manually) can help your overall operation. Combining digital work order instructions with quality data entry is a solid first move. This will give your operators step by step instructions for processing any part when it comes out of the machine. They will also know which measurements and data they need to collect on a form to enter it directly into the system.

This approach can help you manage complex post processing operations, and even manage work-in-progress inventory by tracking individual parts as they move through post processing.

Machine Status

Finally, the most complex way to improve AM automation is with direct machine integration. This approach unlocks many capabilities including, but not limited to:

Starting and stopping jobs automatically
Alerts when more raw materials are needed
Real time tracking for machine alerts and alarms
Real time status monitoring
Recording all data from the machine
Vision system integration with the machines for better operator visibility

Direct machine integration may require working with your vendor to provide addition functionality, or you may need custom software to connect and collect data from the machine. Fortunately, Corso Systems can complete this job quickly.

Wrapping Up

As technology continues to improve, innovative processes like additive manufacturing will emerge. Inevitably, it will take time for new technologies to get a foothold in the industry and will take time before it can be integrated into your current workflow.

You don’t have to wait for the vendors to catch up to the rest of the manufacturing world to get more value out of your investment. As we described in this post there are a number of easy wins to make your AM systems more effective as a tool for your organization you can implement today.

As AM becomes more common across more industries it is inevitable the machines will be able to integrate with industry standard protocols and tools, and until then the only limit to what you can do is your imagination!