The role of measurement and simulation in additive manufacturing within the frame of Industry 4.0

In recent years, manufacturing industry has been facing a new and powerful technology, able to produce complex and cost efficient parts, the additive manufacturing (AM). The rapid development and expansion of the use of this method was accompanied by a vast development of equipment and software in mainly two directions, namely the optimization of a designed part with respect to its weight and mechanical performance and the simulation of the fabrication of this part via AM. Nevertheless, several drawbacks on the fabrication of components of a variety of materials have been observed, especially with reference to the final product dimensions and the corresponding distortions caused by a number of factors that influence the final result. In the present work, the correlation between the measurements of specific characteristics of components fabricated via AM and the data provided by the simulation models are presented. Also, the role of these measurements on the development of a component consistent with the initial design is underlined. To this end, a test case is presented, in which a part of high geometrical complexity is realized using the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) method. The comparison between the measurements of the final product reveals the need of constant and consistent measurements for assuring the part's accurate fabrication.