America Makes and ANSI publish Standardization Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing 3.0
July 19, 2023
America Makes, Youngstown, Ohio, USA, and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Washington, have announced the publication of the ‘Standardization Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing, Version 3.0’, developed by the America Makes and ANSI Additive Manufacturing Standardization Collaborative (AMSC).
The roadmap reportedly describes the current and desired future standardisation landscape for Additive Manufacturing and focuses on industrial market sectors using AM technologies. A total of 141 standardisation gaps – including sixty new gaps – have been identified with corresponding recommendations across the AM lifecycle areas of design; precursor materials; process control; post-processing; finished material properties; qualification and certification; non-destructive evaluation; maintenance and repair; and data. The hope is that the roadmap will be broadly adopted by the user community to facilitate a more coordinated approach to the future development of AM standards.
The AMSC is a cross-sector coordinating body launched in 2016 to fill the need for coordination to maintain a consistent, harmonised, and non-contradictory set of standards. Whilst the AMSC itself does not develop standards or specifications, it works to accelerate the development of industry-wide AM standards and specifications consistent with stakeholder needs to facilitate AM industry growth.
“The publication of the AMSC roadmap is a significant milestone, capturing the latest in standardisation activity affecting the Additive Manufacturing community,” said Brandon Ribic, technology director, America Makes. “The roadmap illustrates where progress has been made over the last five years but also where opportunities remain for standards and R&D to increase the use of AM technologies.”
Approximately 300 individuals from 150 public and private sector organisations supported the roadmap’s development, including representatives of US federal government agencies and national laboratories, SDOs, industry, academia, and others. The document represents the culmination of the AMSC’s work since September 2022 to identify key safety, performance, and quality issues for AM technologies, relevant published standards and those in development, as well as to assess gaps.
The roadmap provides prioritised timeframes for when work should occur. Of the 141 gaps, fifty-four gaps/recommendations are identified as high priority, sixty-four as medium priority, and twenty-three as low priority. In ninety-one cases, additional pre-standardisation research and development (R&D) is needed. The roadmap also identifies SDOs or others that may be able to develop the standards or perform the R&D. The AMSC aims to continue tracking progress by the SDOs to address the roadmap’s gaps and recommendations.
The impetus to develop an update to the roadmap – last published in June 2018 – began following a 2022 survey on the use of the roadmap. The AMSC advisory group (comprised of industry, government, and SDO representatives) concluded that it was time to update the document to maintain its relevancy and alignment with current practices and stakeholder needs.
“ANSI extends hearty thanks and congratulations to the volunteers who developed the AMSC roadmap, and we are confident it will continue to guide standardisation activity for the Additive Manufacturing sector,” said Joe Bhatia, president and CEO, ANSI. “ANSI has a long history of successfully bringing together public- and private-sector stakeholders to outline standardisation needs for emerging technologies and national and global priorities.”
Free access to the roadmap is available here.
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