China3D printingNet November 1st, SmartParts is3D printingThe component integrates the company’s proprietary digital signature technology, making it scannable, serializable and cloud-connected. The SmartParts process is designed to achieve identity verification and traceability. It works by embedding programmable nanoparticles in parts, which can then be detected and registered using smart scanners.
“Many of our customers want to use additive manufacturing in production, but there are legitimate concerns about verifying materials, managing suppliers, and how to verify manufacturing data,” explains Robert Haleluk, CEO of PrintParts. “If our industry wants to further enter production applications, we need to introduce technology to solve these problems and provide the security and traceability that the company expects.”
The handheld smart scanner is scanning the 3D printed SmartPart. Photo from PrintParts.
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Since its establishment in 2016, PrintParts’ 3D printer product portfolio has steadily grown to more than fifty units. The company currently offers five different additive manufacturing technologies, including FDM, SLA, and SLS, to serve customers in the aerospace, medical, and automotive industries. According to PrintParts, it has the largest fleet of Formlabs Fuse 1 printers on the market for 3D printing polymer parts made of nylon PA11 and PA12.
Now, PrintParts has developed and tested its SmartParts technology using a variety of 3D printing processes and provides SmartParts services.
SmartParts: Achieve traceability in 3D printing
The core of SmartParts technology is to connect manufacturing data to 3D printed parts. By embedding nanoparticles in components and scanning them through tactile and audio feedback, SmartPart users can track parts through the additive manufacturing process chain. Through part scanning, you can confirm its 3D printing technology, confirm PrintParts as a supplier, verify the materials used, and even add information to the digital twin of the part.
The digital history of scanned parts is stored on PrintParts’ browser-based SmartParts platform, where identity verification and part tracking functions can be found. The platform can also be integrated with existing MES/ERP systems.
PrintParts believes that its innovation will change the rules of the game for companies and organizations that require full traceability or certified materials in the 3D printing workflow (including those in the defense sector). With SmartParts, customers can also ensure that their parts comply with predefined manufacturing specifications.
In fact, PrintParts is one of the five winners of the 2021 Formnext Entrepreneurship Challenge. The competition allowed young additive manufacturing companies with less than five years of trading experience to compete with each other with their innovative business ideas and technological achievements. The company will also showcase SmartParts (Booth 12.0 B81B) at the Formnext trade show in Frankfurt, Germany from November 16th to 19th.
Polymer parts 3D printed by PrintParts. Photo from PrintParts.
In order to truly ensure the performance of distributed 3D printed parts, traceability in the process chain is the key. Earlier this year, 3D printing software developer Authentise worked with the manufacturing intelligence department of Hexagon AB, a global technology company based in Sweden, to develop software that can make 3D printing more traceable. The program digitizes every step of the additive manufacturing workflow by extending the control loop from the machine level to include data from design, manufacturing operations, and quality assurance.
Elsewhere, Renishaw has previously worked with software development company TRACEam to deploy end-to-end quality management tools for industrial additive manufacturing systems. The software is directly integrated into Renishaw’s InfiniAM API ecosystem and aims to provide customers with a simple and scalable way to track and manage AM parts.
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