Systematical Assessment of Automation Potential in Additive Manufacturing Process Chains

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies are considered to be essential production processes of the future, as they enable novel products due to the high geometric design freedom at almost constant production costs. In terms of industrialization, the efficient integration of AM systems into lean production lines is essential. Up to 80% of the total lead time and costs of additively manufactured components are currently generated before or after the actual AM printing process, specifically within pre- and post-process steps. A common tool to reduce lead times and costs in production lines is the automation of manual process steps along the entire end-to-end process chain. Since the development of complex automation solutions is usually very cost-intensive, the application must be analyzed extensively before development. However, due to the high complexity and diversity of end-to-end AM process chains, the assessment of the automation potential for AM technologies is considered to be challenging. The goal of this work is to develop a methodology to systematically analyze the automation potential along the end-to-end AM process chain and identify high potentials of automation. For this, the common end-to-end process chains of Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB/M) and Directed Energy Deposition (DED-LB/M) were defined systematically. According to the end-to-end process chains, the mutual literature-based degree of automation was determined for each process step and its linkage. Finally, a value-benefit analysis of automation solutions was carried out for every process step, to highlight high and low automation potentials.