Digital Additive Enterprise: Software Sandbox Provides a Unique Testing Environment for AM Chains

Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers new opportunities in digital end-to-end processes and, compared to traditional manufacturing techniques, is one of the readily available digitalization branches. The direct and fast transfer of digital model geometries into real parts is linked vertically (upstream) with enterprise-class Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). Parts are linked directly with digital product data (downstream). The Chair DAP´s vision of a Digital Additive Enterprise includes multiple software solutions meshed together forming a perfectly working universal part factory. In contrast, the current state-of-the-art is characterized by a broad spectrum of different data interchange formats, stand-alone software and digital break points, resulting in a variety of possible combinations, data loss and inefficiencies along the digital process chain. To streamline the information flow from designer, to machine, to end-customer and to develop new digital solutions for enterprise manufacturing systems, the RWTH Aachen Chair for Digital Additive Production DAP recently initiated a “Software Sandbox” approach, continuously integrating all recent and advanced software solutions that are applied in the AM industry into this sandbox.