Reflections on the AMUG 2022 Conference

by Michael Brennen

Earlier this month a number of teammates and I attended and exhibited at the 2022 Additive
Manufacturing User Group (AMUG) conference in Chicago, Illinois. This yearly event brings
together the best-in-class additive manufacturing (AM) experts to discuss challenges,
developments, and everything in between. I love the conference because of the chance to meet
and greet new and old colleagues, especially since so many of them are hands on AM
professionals that have a thirst for learning and a willingness to share their knowledge to help
other practitioners and the industry. At Sigma Labs, we refer to this shared knowledge base as
“radical collaboration”.

During AMUG, Sigma Labs hosted demos and discussions with various colleagues to announce
partnerships, as well as advancements in our technology. The week began with a product
showcase at DMG MORI’s Tech Tour, held at their Center of Excellence outside Chicago, for a
broad audience of end-users including attendees from the medical, aerospace and space launch
markets. The PrintRite3D system was used to demonstrate how in-process monitoring and
analytics can be correlated to improve part quality, and it was well received. We were happy to
support DMG MORI at this event and showcase the power of combined solutions to solve the full
additive value chain for customers.

At our booth at AMUG, PrintRite3D was on display for customers to experience the new
product features that enhance machine, part, and process health and quality. We had many
opportunities to demonstrate our product’s increased functionality and enhanced abilities to
detect build anomalies using several customer case-studies. The point of all our product
updates is to help individual customers improve quality and decrease the cost of AM, while
helping to expand industry-wide adoption.

As a provider of third-party “agnostic” in-process quality assurance solutions, we were happy to
introduce our great new partner AMFG, at the AMUG conference. AMFG is a leading provider of
manufacturing execution systems (MES) and workflow software that empowers organizations
to manage and scale their additive manufacturing processes. In a keynote presentation titled,
Connected AM Workflow: Powder-to-Part, Jacob Brunsberg from Sigma and Sven Hinrichs from
AMFG discussed their collaboration to optimize and standardize the additive manufacturing workflow by using PrintRite3D and sensor data to enhance the functionality of the AMFG’s
manufacturing ecosystem.

In addition to the session with AMFG, Alex Benham, our technical sales engineer, presented a
session titled, Machine, Process, Part – a framework for Qualification & Certification. Alex talked about how achieving true scaled production is impossible without qualification and certification and how these factors may be a small portion of the overall compliance and regulatory landscape, but they are the foundation everything else is built on. He also demonstrated how certification and qualification is based on the process of gathering and evaluating data to establish that a process can dependably output a product meeting all relevant standards, while also obtaining a statistical confidence level.

We look forward to seeing you at next year’s AMUG conference.

And if you are attending the upcoming RAPID + TCT conference in Detroit, please join us at booth 2125. We’ll also be co-exhibiting with partner Additive Industries at The Space Tech Expo booth 7001 in Long Beach, CA May 23-25.