This section introduces the use cases for the OPC UA Additive Manufacturing specification. For the use cases described in sections 5.1 to 5.6, a maximum sampling rate of 1 Hz is considered to be sufficient.

Identify an AM machine and its additive manufacturing production techniques. Each varies due to materials, layering, and machine technology used.

Monitor available sensor data indicating the current machine’s health, serviceable components and production operability in order to generate quality reports and alert the machine operator to potential errors.

Identify feedstock and track their consumption during production on an AM machine for cost analysis and inventory management.

Monitor the availability and left-over quantities of feedstock for production to enable foresighted production and maintenance planning.

The Additive Manufacturing interface makes use of OPC 40001-1. As such, it is providing the use cases “Machine Identification and Nameplate”, “Finding all Machines in a Server”, “Finding all Components of a Machine” and “Machine Monitoring”. It also provides the MachineryBuildingBlocks folder, directly referencing all Machinery Building blocks used by the Machine Tools interface instance.

The Additive Manufacturing interface makes use of OPC 40501-1. As such, it is providing the use cases “Identify Machines of Different Manufacturers”, “Overview if Production is Running”, “Overview of Parts in a Job”, “Overview of Runtimes for a Job”, “Overview of Upcoming Manual Activities”, “Overview of Errors and Warnings” and “Providing Data for KPI Calculations”.