An additive manufacturing benchmark artifact and deviation measurement method

Additive manufacturing (AM) is established as a new class for fabricating 3D physical prototypes layer by layer. Given that a large number of different 3D printers (AM machines) are present now (as a product of renowned manufacturers or custom-made products), the design of a benchmark artifact for evaluation of the AM processes is very important. This implies quality evaluation of the capabilities and limitations of each AM process and also the geometrical testing of the 3D printers. The paper proposes a benchmark artifact, according to the criteria for modeling of the benchmark artifact, with a large number of basic features for its geometrical evaluation. Although there are a large number of commercial software packages, this paper also proposes a low-cost developed measurement method of geometrical deviation that could be also adjustable for requirements in an easy way. Verification of the proposed deviation measurement method has been done by several experiments. The experiments include fabrication of the proposed benchmark artifact on available 3D printers by an FFF (fused filament fabrication) process also known as FDM (fused deposition modeling), and after that its scanning. Verification is done by comparing quality evaluation of each fabricated part by developed method and commercial software.