Lübeck, Germany  – As metal additive manufacturing moves from advanced production tool to industrialized manufacturing platform, quality assurance is becoming a commercial necessity rather than an added extra.

That shift sits at the center of the collaboration between Nikon SLM Solutions and Additive Assurance, whose AMiRIS® in-situ monitoring and quality assurance technology is now integrated as AMiRIS Inside on the NXG platform, bringing real-time melt pool and layer analysis to large-scale, multi-laser metal AM systems.

Customers no longer judge metal AM systems on productivity, build size, or laser count alone. Increasingly, they want evidence, confidence, and a clear path to validated production.

Kaj Merten Berggreen, Product Manager at Nikon SLM Solutions, has watched the role of in-situ monitoring change as the market has matured. “Ten or twelve years ago, in-situ monitoring was seen as a research tool. People collected fascinating process data, but the industry was still working out what to do with it,” he says. “Today, as customers move into industrial production, the question isn’t just what you can measure. It’s whether that information helps build a better understanding of the process and supports more confident decisions.”

AMiRIS stood out during evaluation for combining sensing capability with product maturity. “There are good camera and sensor technologies available, but hardware alone isn’t enough,” Berggreen says. “What impressed us about Additive Assurance was a productized solution: data acquisition, software, analysis, and a front end that made the information approachable. Many solutions stop halfway. AMiRIS was much closer to something customers could actually work with.”

“On a large build, the most expensive moment to find a defect is at the end. For customers running NXG in production, quality assurance has to work inside the machine, not after it. Embedding AMiRIS Inside means the evidence behind every part is gathered while the part is being built saving an enormous amount of cost in post-process control, and that is what qualifying large-format additive manufacturing for serial production depends on.”commented Simon Merkt-Schippers, EVP Product Management, Nikon SLM Solutions.

In-situ monitoring isn’t only about catching defects mid-build. Combined with machine data, atmosphere monitoring, and laser data, it adds another high-value signal to a fuller picture of build quality before problems become expensive. “AMiRIS gives customers another vital part of the puzzle,” Berggreen says. “It contributes to a more holistic understanding of what’s happening during manufacture.” 

For manufacturers, that’s where the commercial case lands. Metal AM productivity isn’t limited only by build speed. It’s limited by uncertainty: late-stage inspection, cautious over-testing, rework loops, and the cost of discovering too late that a build has moved outside expected behavior. AMiRIS turns in-process data into usable quality intelligence, making the process more visible and easier to act on.

“As metal AM moves further into industrial use, the winners won’t simply be the companies that print more parts,” Berggreen says. “They’ll be the companies that understand, control, and evidence their processes with confidence. That’s why in-situ quality assurance is becoming central to the next phase of metal AM efficiency, and why AMiRIS is increasingly relevant to manufacturers serious about scaling production without scaling uncertainty.”

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