Open Additive & Addiguru to Increase Accessibility of Industrial 3D Printing Process Control

As many benefits that metal 3D printing has to offer, adoption can be impeded by the additional expenses of failed builds, process developments, and post-printing inspections. But luckily, many research institutes and companies around the world are working on ways to give metal AM users better control of the fabrication process, and one of the best ways to deliver this is through in-situ process monitoring, like the combined solution offered by Authentise and Addiguru, LLC. Specializing in layerwise AM monitoring software, New Orleans startup Addiguru uses artificial intelligence, computer vision, and machine learning to detect critical process errors in real time, and then send alerts to the operators in order to save on production costs and time. Now, it’s announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ohio-based startup Open Additive, LLC to offer a more practical, and affordable, method for industrial AM process control.

According to Open Additive, many of the other commercial process monitoring solutions in the AM industry are highly proprietary, expensive, or both. That’s why these two startups signed an MoU to formalize their collaboration: both pride themselves on more versatile and affordable process monitoring and control solutions for industrial metal 3D printing.

“Addiguru recognizes the high added costs of part development and production due to lack of useful process insights and controls, and we’re excited to work with Open Additive to bring practical and affordable solutions to the metal AM industry to address this problem,” Addiguru’s founder, Shuchi “SK” Khurana, stated in a press release.

Recoat, tomography, and spatter cameras shown mounted on a customer’s L-PBF system

Open Additive first introduced its AMSENSE multi-sensor data collection and analysis platform to external customers in beta form back in 2018. As a way to collect data for R&D purposes, the open-architecture suite has since been used multiple times as an add-on option for several industrial laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) printers, including systems from Concept Laser, EOS, and 3D Systems, and even its own PANDA printer. Over the past year, Open Additive has even sold some configurations to use with the EOS M400-1, as well as its PANDA.

The company is working with Addiguru to directly integrate its process monitoring software, which has been commercialized for use on a subscription basis and also demonstrated with an EOS 3D printer, into the AMSENSE environment as a capability for industrial AM users.

Evolution of a delamination failure observed using AMSENSE thermal tomography sensor.

Dr. Tom Spears, Open Additive’s Director of Research and Technology, explained, “The addition of Addiguru’s real-time analytics represents an important step-change in the evolution of our AMSENSE product, which has been designed from the outset to allow easy integration of emerging capabilities, developed both internally and externally.”

Both companies are members of Ohio-based organization America Makes, the national additive manufacturing innovation institute, and are working together, along with Ohio’s Wright State University, as part of a USAF-funded America Makes project (Open Analytics Platform for Multi-Sensor In-Situ Monitoring) to demonstrate Addiguru’s AI-based analytic for the purposes of detecting critical print errors on a commercial L-PBF system.

Open Additive and Addiguru formalized their intent, under the newly signed MoU, to provide their respective print monitoring and process control capabilities as a combined solution. According to the release, this integration will act as the “first demonstration of AI-based analytics in an open-architecture multi-sensor monitoring platform,” and should be available beginning this May.

Under their non-exclusive partnership, the companies will give users the option to purchase Addiguru’s monitoring solution and Open Additive’s AMSENSE, either together or independently. The plan is to create and demonstrate use cases for their combined process monitoring capability by working AM service bureaus, as well as other industrial partners.

Integration of Addiguru AI-powered analysis software running in the AMSENSE software architecture.

(Source/Images: Open Additive)