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ASTM International & America Makes Create Strategic Guide for Additive Manufacturing Data

As the national accelerator for additive manufacturing (AM) in the U.S., Youngstown, Ohio-based America Makes works to accelerate adoption of the technology and increase the country’s global manufacturing competitiveness through training, events and trips, projects, apprenticeships, and standards publication. This week, ASTM International’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) announced that, together with America Makes, it has created a strategic guide for AM data.

The guide is a direct result of a workshop about AM data management and schema held this winter in Washington D.C. and organized by ASTM and America Makes. Over 100 academic, government, and industry experts came together to engage in brainstorm sessions, technical presentations, and panel discussions, all relating to data in additive manufacturing.

“A key and large gap in the development of an AM data ecosystem is how to easily and securely generate, store, analyze, and share critical and vital data. A sub-gap is the consistency of the data that is gathered across multiple groups,” stated Mohsen Seifi, PhD, ASTM International’s director of global additive manufacturing programs.

ASTM International works to serve societal needs of the world and educate industry professionals. The group has defined and set over 12,000 ASTM standards that are operating all around the world. The AM development timeline could be speeding up, due to developments in analysis, artificial intelligence, digital data acquisition, machine learning, and modeling, but the expansion has not been observed yet. The new strategic guide has identified action plans, challenges, gaps, and solutions for AM data to help with this growth.

Mahdi Jamshidinia, PhD, ASTM International’s AM R&D project manager, explained, “This strategic guide attempts to address series of gaps and provide solutions and potential action plans to address the gaps. The guide provides a summary of discussions during the workshop and can be used by all industry stakeholders and AM experts who want to participate in the development of an AM data ecosystem and contribute to standardization.”

“The guide highlights the importance of data management and data principles which will benefit the broader AM supply chain, and will serve as a resource to strengthen collaboration and ease the challenges common to AM data sharing. We are grateful to all who worked on this effort and believe this guide complements the efforts of the AMSC and America Makes’ technology maturation strategic objectives,” stated Brandon Ribic, Technology Director of America Makes.”

Additionally, the December workshop led to the development of a new subcommittee about data, which will create and perform value-stream mapping processes in order to call out the dependencies, needs, opportunities, processes, and tools that the industry needs in order to completely understand the digital thread. The subcommittee, F42.08, is within ASTM’s existing F42 additive manufacturing technologies committee, and one of the first projects it’s working on is the standardization of the AM common data dictionary (CDD).

Alex Kitt, PhD, product manager at EWI and chair of the new subcommittee, said, “This new subcommittee will provide a home for AM data experts where key standards activities can be coordinated, prioritized, and developed.”

The AM CoE also introduced a new insight video this week that’s also about AM data management, so it goes hand in hand with the new strategic guide. The video, below, features interviews with some important figures in the industry, including GE Research AI Principal Scientist Kareem Aggour; Shane Collins, the VP and General Manager of Additive Industries North America; Technical Specialist Douglas N. Wells with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center; and ASTM’s own Seifi.

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ASTM and UL to Publish ISO-ASTM Standard for Additive Manufacturing

Nonprofit standards development organization ASTM International, which develops and publishes technical standards for a range of industries, materials, products, services, and systems around the globe, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Underwriters Laboratories (UL), another nonprofit which works to advance its mission of public safety through discovery and application of scientific knowledge. The agreement will set up a framework for a cooperation between the two to create an international, dual-logo ASTM and International Standardization Organization (ISO) standard.

“We are announcing a collaboration agreement with ASTM International that will result in an ISO-ASTM standard for additive manufacturing facility safety management,” Patrick Wilmot, Communications Manager for UL Standards, told 3DPrint.com. “This is an exciting partnership for our organizations and we believe it will be of great use to the AM industry.”

While ASTM signed an MoU with German testing and certification organization TÜV°SÜD at formnext 2019, and created the Additive Manufacturing Standards Development Structure with ISO back in 2016, this new MoU is the first international collaboration agreement of its kind with fellow standards development organization UL.

(Image: Underwriters Laboratories)

“This partnership brings together both organizations’ expertise and shared desire to drive global safety. It leverages ASTM’s technical committee and relationship with ISO with our document and research to drive impact and positively influence the international standards landscape,” said UL Standards Vice President Global Standards Phil Piqueira.

The terms of this new MoU state that ASTM will act as the standards developing organization (SDO) for the agreement, which includes responsibilities such as managing all activities and administrative support. In addition, it will convene the organization’s F42 additive manufacturing technical committee, first formed over a decade ago, in order to review and advance the UL document, the basis of which is its 3400 Outline of Investigation for Additive Manufacturing Facility Safety Management. Once the document, developed with UL research, is complete, ASTM will publish the standard.

ASTM has an existing agreement with ISO to publish its standards documents as ASTM-ISO standards, which means that UL Standards will transfer its copyright of the material in the UL 3400 document over to ASTM so that it can officially be published as an ISO-ASTM standard. The complete, published standard will also be attributed to UL Standards, due to its content and technical expertise.

“The collaborative nature of global standardization creates many opportunities for partnership with other SDOs. We appreciate these opportunities to share knowledge with partners like Underwriters Laboratories to help advance public safety in this fast-evolving field,” stated Brian Meincke, ASTM International’s Vice President of Finance, Business Development and Innovation.

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Auburn University Receives NASA Contract to Develop 3D Printing Techniques to Improve Liquid Rocket Engines

L-R: Auburn University’s John Mason and Patrick Scheuermann, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, sign a Space Act Agreement [2015 Image: Auburn University]

Back in 2015,  Auburn University and NASA signed a Space Act Agreement for the purposes of exploring and advancing additive manufacturing applications and research together. The university has remained committed to 3D printing, and aerospace, over the years, working with NASA in a public-private partnership to establish its National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME) two years ago for the purpose of improve the performance of 3D printed parts, respond to workforce development needs in the AM industry, and share research results with collaborators.

Now, the university’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering has announced that NASA awarded a three-year, $5.2 million contract to NCAME to research and create 3D printing techniques to help improve the performance of liquid rocket engines. The work covered under the contract is part of NASA’s Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology (RAMPT) project, and is just the latest development to come out of Auburn’s relationship with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

“This partnership with Auburn University and industry will help develop improvements for liquid rocket engines, as well as contribute to commercial opportunities. The technologies developed by this team will be made available widely to the private sector, offering more companies the opportunity to use these advanced manufacturing techniques,” said Paul McConnaughey, the Deputy Director of Marshall Space Flight Center.

RAMPT is centered around evolving lightweight, large-scale novel and 3D printing techniques for developing and fabricating regeneratively cooled thrust chamber assemblies for use in liquid rocket engines. NCAME already collaborates with more than 70 academic, government, industry, and non-profit organizations, and will now help support the RAMPT project as it works to create a domestic supply chain and specialized manufacturing technology vendors, which will be used by all government agencies, commercial space companies, and academic institutions.

“For decades, Auburn engineers have been instrumental in helping the U.S. achieve its space exploration goals. This new collaboration between NASA and our additive manufacturing researchers will play a major role in developing advanced rocket engines that will drive long-duration spaceflight, helping our nation achieve its bold vision for the future of space exploration,” said Christopher B. Roberts, the dean of the university’s College of Engineering.

Michael Ares, who works in Media Relations for Auburn University, told 3DPrint.com in an email that the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering is a leader in developing and implementing the kind of AM aerospace technology that Auburn and NASA have also been working on “behind the scenes,” which would allow astronauts on long-duration spaceflights to manufacture spare parts when needed.

“Think about how that would have been helpful on Apollo 13…” Ares told us.

GE Avionics is another Auburn partner that’s taken research jointly conducted with the university all the way to production. Additionally, Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey announced last week that GE Aviation will invest $50 million to expand the additive manufacturing operation at its Auburn facility. All of this goes to show that when it comes to aerospace 3D printing, it seems like Alabama is the place to be right now.

“This contract is a giant leap towards making Alabama the ‘go to state’ for additive manufacturing. We look forward to growing our partnership with NASA, industry and academia as we support the development of our nation’s next rocket engines,” said Mike Ogles, Director of NASA programs in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the RAMPT Project Manager.

The announcement about the university’s new NASA contract was made at the biannual four-day meeting of ASTM International’s F42 Committee on Additive Manufacturing Technologies, which is hosted by the university at the Auburn Marriott Opelika Resort & Spa at Grand National in Opelika. Nima Shamsaei, the Director of NCAME, will lead Auburn’s team for the RAMPT project as the principal investigator.

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