AMFG Introduces New Holistic Build Analysis Tool for Additive Manufacturing

AMFG is a UK-based provider of automation software for additive manufacturing that helps clients to streamline their production workflows. Today, the company introduced a new Holistic Build Analysis Tool that allows manufacturers to instantly estimate how full a machine build is without the need for nesting. It allows users to nearly instantaneously estimate the capacity of their builds and to predict how cost-effective a part will be to produce.

“The development of our build analysis tool was driven by our customers’ desire to further increase the efficiency of their production planning,” AMFG CEO Keyvan Karimi told 3DPrint.com. “Initially, we’d developed a beta version that allowed our customers to manually mark how full they believed their builds to be, but soon realised that we could provide much more value and more accurate estimates by automating this process entirely.

“Production management for additive manufacturing is still painfully manual and inefficient, and Holistic Build Analysis is a major step towards a fully automated additive production process from beginning to end. We’re continually improving the scope of our machine learning technology so that manufacturers can save a huge amount of time and significantly reduce costs by optimising production at the planning stage – all through AI-driven automation.”

By being able to predict the capacity of a machine build, companies can better prioritize production jobs and streamline the production planning process. Currently, manufacturers have to use nesting software to do this, which can take hours or even days.

“Our new build analysis feature offers significant time savings for manufacturers,” said Felix Doerr, Head of Business Development at AMFG. “Many nesting software packages offer an iterative solution, requiring users to set time limits before the nesting process is completed. This is an incredibly time-consuming process, particularly if you merely need an estimate of how full your builds are for production scheduling purposes.

“With Holistic Build Analysis, instead of waiting hours to see how full your build is, our customers can receive an accurate capacity estimation in only a matter of seconds. Our new tool is a radical alternative not only in terms of the time savings it delivers, but also because of its potential it has to change the way we optimise production scheduling for additive manufacturing.”

Using Holistic Build Analysis, users can assign parts to a build, at which point machine learning algorithms are used to generate an estimate of the build’s fill rate almost instantly. The data is given as a percentage, which the manufacturer can then use to prioritize the parts that should be produced next based on deadlines, machine availability or optimal arrangement of parts.

“Our customers will be able to compare requested parts by volume and geometrical parameters to see where they fit best on the build,” said Doerr. “Soon, the system will even be able to suggest which parts should be produced next.

“Our software’s estimations are becoming ever-more accurate thanks to our algorithms. Over time, we anticipate that automated build analysis and scheduling will become an integrated part of the end-to-end manufacturing process, taking additive manufacturing another step closer to a fully automated, autonomous manufacturing future.”

If AMFG’s tool can accurately measure yield and throughput along with a solid cost estimation than this would prove to be a valuable tool for service bureaus and manufacturers. Cost estimation in 3D printing is quite difficult to do, proper automation of accurate yields would be a boon indeed for userrs.

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