Search Results

Industry standards are key enablers in helping businesses around the meet regulatory requirements, keep costs down, gain market access, and instill consumer confidence. SAE International, a standards development organization (SDO) critical to the transportation industry, works in partnership with industry to develop and distribute standards important in automotive and aerospace product development, product performance, and quality management. Historically, industry standards were formatted with the intention of being distributed in print. This changed with the evolution of new electronic formats, and now most standards are available in PDF or EPUB. While progressive at the time, these formats are now proving inadequate due their optimization for readability by the human eye versus consumption by electronic endpoints.

As AM technologies are being used with higher frequencywithin the automotive and aerospace industries, the interest in powder characterization and contaminant identification is growing—especially for suppliers looking to gain entry into these highly regulated industries. Standards for powder materials and methods used for aerospace applications are still be developed, and regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration have been requesting that standards be developed as guidance for the industry. Methods such as CCSEM and HLS could be viable options for suppliers needing to adhere to a powder specification by demonstrating compliance. Solutions exist to integrate such methods into a production environment as exemplified by RJ Lee Group.