Modular system of additive manufacturing benchmarking artefacts for XCT inspection using a design-for-metrology approach

Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers freedom in both design and materials selection. Safety critical industries, such as aerospace and healthcare, stand to benefit from the unique capabilities offered by AM. However, adoption of AM is hindered by the unique and complex inspection and quality assurance requirements that conventional line-of-sight techniques struggle to fulfil. X-ray computed tomography (XCT) is a non-destructive, non-line-of-sight, volumetric imaging technique, which has gained traction as a viable inspection method over the last two decades and shows promise as a next generation dimensional metrology tool for AM. This paper details the development of a system of modular artefacts which provide a reconfigurable toolkit to address a variety of AM metrology challenges. The toolkit consists of AM test, and XCT data validation modules. The test modules are engineered to assess the ability of an AM system to produce challenging geometries. Additionally, several XCT data validation modules are introduced, which are intended to reduce measurement uncertainty by providing a consistent repeatably measured ground truth in the form of features of known size and shape in each dataset. The AM test modules are parameterised based on AM process and XCT scanning parameters, enabling the modules to be adapted for specific requirements.