An approach to evaluate the wear of customized manufacturing fixtures through the analysis of 3D scan data

With the recent gain in popularity and adoption of additive manufacturing in various industrial sectors, quality assessments to determine the functionality of 3D printed parts are critical. This holds especially when the parts are subjected to wear as in the case of the production of customized fixtures. Some reinforced polymeric materials for additive manufacturing can be employed as a substitute for low-resistance metals like Aluminium. In this paper, a custom-made tribometer was used to simulate the wear of 3D printed fixtures of Alumide material for sheet metal inspection operations. Contact 3D scanning is used to monitor the condition of the fixture for increasing numbers of wear cycles. This study aims to calculate the wear volume of cylindrical pins starting from the surface points of 3D scan data. The methodology employs alpha shapes to obtain the progression of the volume and area of the worn zone. Experimental tests to evaluate the wear volume were carried out to compare the durability of Alumide to that of Aluminium, filling the gap of previous literature, which had focused exclusively on diametral wear. The findings indicate a better wear resistance for Alumide specimens and this work contributes to broadening the knowledge about the wear behaviour and the lifetime of 3D printed parts.