Development of Surface Characterisation Toolbox for Additive Manufactured Components: from Planar Layer Surfaces to Complex Functional Surfaces

The additive manufacturing (AM) technology possesses the potential to change the paradigm for manufacturing. To facilitate the successful uptake of AM technologies into a wider range of applications, AM needs metrological methods to measure, evaluate, validate techniques for both AM processes and AM parts. Two strategies are proposed for the optimisation of AM processes and the evaluation of the functional performance of AM products. A specific procedure is developed for the characterisation of AM layer surfaces with an aim to reflect the unique characterisation of AM process. For complex functional AM surfaces which need the employment of X-ray computed tomography (XCT) for their measurement, the surface characterisation techniques, including filtration, are extended so that they can cope with the complex surface shapes and the triangular mesh data.