Advancement of Additive Manufacturing Technology Owing to Data Science

Abstract

This article addresses the application of data science in additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing, or 3D printer, has attracted much attention and has been utilized for not only prototyping, but also manufacturing real parts. In many cases to manufacture real metal parts by additive manufacturing, additive manufacturing technologies have a lot of problems to be solved. The problems include process optimization, defects detection during process, non-destructive inspection, etc. In the case of manufacturing structural metal parts, for example, defect free parts should be manufactured, but it needs a lot of cost and time to optimize process conditions for defect free parts. In order to solve the problems in the additive manufacturing field, data science approach has been investigated and applied. This article emphasizes recent achievements of the application of data science approach for process optimization in powder bed fusion type additive manufacturing technologies. In addition, this article introduces the problems of additive manufacturing technologies to be solved for expanding the application of them, and also introduces the recent achievement in an automation of the process design.