TÜV SÜD Product Service offers certification of industrial additive manufacturing sites in accordance with the new ISO/ASTM 52920 standard. The standard describes quality-assurance requirements and forms part of the ISO/ASTM 52900 series, which is fundamental for this relatively new industry.
“Using the new standard, component manufacturers can streamline supplier audits to an enormous extent”, says Simon Schlagintweit, Lead Auditor Additive Manufacturing at TÜV SÜD. “This facilitates the auditing process and ensures the quality of industrial-scale additive manufacturing throughout the supply chain.” Even the tiniest deviations in feedstock or machine calibration may adversely affect component stability. Given this, ISO/ASTM 52920 defines both quality-related factors in the process chain and processes at manufacturing sites. ISO/ASTM 52920 is divided into three aspects: “Qualification of the additive system operations”, “Quality assurance” and “Verification of the part requirements”. Sub-aspects include data preparation, system setup and post-processing. Other essential clauses concern the continuous improvement process, part specifications and a validation plan.
Integrated Instead of Product Specific.
The new standard adopts an integrated instead of a product-specific approach, which is also suitable for regulated sectors, including the automotive, rail, aerospace and medtech industries. It applies to all methods included in the scope of the ISO/ASTM 52900 standard and was developed in a collaboration between the ISO/TC 261 “Additive Manufacturing” and CEN/TC 438 “Additive Manufacturing Processes” Technical Committees of the French standardisation institute, Association française de normalisation (AFNOR). In Germany, the “Additive Manufacturing” working committee of the DIN Standards Committee Technology of Materials was involved in the development.
TÜV SÜD supports users, customers and manufacturers in quality assurance for additive manufacturing. This includes expert personnel, implementation of defined manufacturing processes and handling of special feedstock as well as issues such as standardisation, delivery periods and reproducible quality. Represented throughout the world, TÜV SÜD experts have comprehensive industry experience and have participated in standardisation projects such as DIN SPEC 17071.
