At the Additive Manufacturing Strategies (AMS) event in New York City I have the double pleasure of being involved in two panels: Moderating the Future of DED and WAAM and as a panelist on Emerging Alloys and Metallic Materials for AM. What do these two panels have in common? They both require qualification to enter into series production. They both require a balance of technical and business requirements. They are both enabled by people.
To be qualified, in simplest terms, you must be repeatable and reliable. If your material or your process is not, then it will be difficult, if not impossible to be commercially viable even if you somehow survive qualification. It means the materials are consistent in supply to the process because if the material feedstock has inconsistent characteristics, it will cause the printing process and downstream processes to produce…
