A Conceptual Framework Towards the Realization of In situ Monitoring and Control of End-to-End Additive Manufacturing Process

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is considered one of the key technologies for realizing Industry 4.0. There are numerous stages in the end-to-end AM process, including component design, material design, build, and so on. An enormous amount of data is generated along the end-to-end AM process that can be acquired from the 3D printer in real-time, micro-characterization studies, and process plan details, among others. For instance, these data can be employed to predict the printed compo-nents’ quality and, at the same time, proactively adapt the 3D printer parameters to achieve better qual-ity. This end-to-end AM process can be mapped onto the digital thread. The current article elaborates on a conceptual framework to acquire the data from various sources associated with the end-to-end AM process and realize monitoring and control of the end-to-end AM process, leading to an intelligent AM process.