3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing Editing and Proofreading Services

The part passed. It was printed on machine four, in the middle of the plate, flat, from powder that had been through two previous builds, and the operator recentred the recoater on the Tuesday. Any one of those facts could be the reason it passed. Print the same file on machine seven, upright, at the edge, and it is a different part with the same drawing number — which is the fact the whole industry has to write down.

We edit what additive manufacturers and service bureaux produce — build and part qualification documentation, process parameter and machine configuration records, powder and feedstock lot documentation and reuse records, orientation, support and nesting specifications, post-processing and heat treatment procedures, inspection and non-destructive testing documentation, first article and qualification reports, design guidance for customers, quotation and technical feasibility responses, and specification and drawing requirements for printed parts. Our editors work on the record that says what makes the part the part.

The build record and part qualification is where additive manufacturing is either repeatable or artisanal, and its failure is treating the file as the specification. A drawing number and an STL do not define an additive part. We work through these so every qualified part carries its build configuration explicitly — the machine, the orientation in all three axes, the position on the plate, the support strategy and the parameter set with its version — since changing any one of these changes the mechanical properties and the industry's recurring failure is assuming otherwise; so the powder is identified by lot with its reuse history, the number of prior builds and the sieving and blending regime, given that virgin and eight-times-recycled powder are different materials; so the witness or coupon strategy is stated with where the coupons sat relative to the part, because a tensile bar from the corner of the plate says little about a part in the centre; so post-processing is recorded as executed with its actual thermal cycle rather than by reference to a procedure; so anything about the build that was abnormal is recorded — a recoater interruption, a laser fault, a restarted layer — as these are the origin of most unexplained results; so the qualification's boundaries are stated: this qualification covers this configuration and not others. Records written this way let a customer requalify rather than reprint.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including build data, parameters and customer designs. We are editors rather than materials or additive process specialists, and we offer no view on parameters, qualification or part performance. What we can do is make the record define the part as it was actually made.