10061924Round 6 Cont. Development and Application of Certification Metrology for Automated Software-based Spatial Target CharacterisationClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKAletheia Imaging Solutions Ltd is an industrial metrology spin-out from The University of Manchester and is commercialising cutting edge technology that is opening up new possibilities for the use of additive manufacturing (AM) in the aerospace, automotive, defence, medical, nuclear and semiconductor industries. AM is a powerful novel manufacturing method, capable of producing components with far greater geometric complexities than could be realised with traditional methods for significantly lower cost. AM faces a major barrier to its widespread adoption caused by defects that can be randomly introduced into components produced by AM in the manufacturing process. These defects can cause a component to fail, rendering AM unsuitable for the production of mission critical parts. X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is a non-destructive imaging modality that allows AM components to be inspected for internal defects, thereby permitting the integrity of parts intended for mission critical applications to be verified. Aletheia offers a patent pending 3D calibration target and automated software solution that facilitates the determination of spatial resolution, measurement errors and measurement confidence of datasets acquired by X-ray CT. Aletheia's technology enables the performance of X-ray CT imaging systems to be validated, allowing for the measurements taken from X-ray CT scans to be applied to real components, including AM parts. In this A4I funded project, Aletheia will work with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the extensive instrumentation and expertise available there to develop a certification routine that will allow the feature dimensions on the 3D calibration targets themselves to be validated. In order for the 3D calibration target to return precise measurements of the metrological performance of an X-ray CT system, it is important that the dimensions of features on the calibration targets are known accurately. This grant will fund experts at NPL to explore the use of various measurement techniques, including coordinate measurement machine (CMM), optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), for the measurement of feature dimensions on Aletheia's 3D calibration targets. NPL will also assist Aletheia in automating these measurement routines, enabling the developed certification method to be applied at scale to large volumes of Aletheia's devices. Work will also be carried out by Aletheia to integrate the measurements obtained during certification into Aletheia's automated analysis software and to adapt the methodology such that it is consistent with existing ASTM, ISO and VDI standards in X-ray CT.