Digital Twins in the Product Life Cycle of Additively Manufactured Components

Abstract

For the manufacturing industry to implement the Industry 4.0 vision, it needs to be increasingly able to acquire process data through suitable process-specific sensors integrated into a component and use data from the production machines. The great advantage of this approach is that integrated data can be acquired during production and used to qualify the manufactured components as well as to develop and improve the processes efficiently. However, Industry 4.0 should not be limited to manufacturing; the manufactured components should also be “smart” in the future and be able to provide condition data during their use. In this context, this article shows how additive manufacturing can be used to produce components with integrated sensors.