Additive manufacturing | Focus Counterfeit protection Metal 3D printing is also being used to embed a hidden cache of information within products to help combat counterfeiting. The technique uses a hiddenmagnetic tag, encodedwith authentication information, during the part’s fabrication. This avoids the vulnerabilities of physical tags such as barcodes or QR codes, as they serve as permanent and unique identifiers, helping to keep the supply chain secure. Once embedded into a non-magnetic item, the tag can be read by a magnetic sensor device such as a smartphone, allowing the information to be accessed by the user. Various approaches have been used to try to change the local properties of the metals during manufacturing to be able to codify the information in the part. For example, one component built from non-magnetic 316L stainless steel uses embedded ferromagnetic 430 or 17-4PH stainless steel regions for local control of themagnetic response. Themagnetic flux normal to the surface is recorded using a magnetic sensor, to create amap, and the distribution of the magnetic regions can be retrieved from the map, creating a tag for storage in a secure database. Conclusion The technology for 3D printing and AM is advancing quickly. The days of a filament printer chugging away to produce a lowquality part are long gone. Systems with large degrees of freedom and high-quality end-effectors offer faster production of sophisticated shapes with less weight, while ML algorithms are boosting the quality of the resulting parts. These structures can now integrate anti-counterfeiting materials and self-healing mechanisms to keep components secure and in operation for longer, and can be combined with smaller, lighter components such as magnets and pumps. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Amolak Badesha at Orbital Composites, Michael Sheath at Greenjets, and Robert Bagheri at Sakuu for their help with researching this article. Alloyed +44 1865 954250 www.alloyed.com CAModels +44 1786 464434 www.camodels.co.uk Croft AdditiveManufacturing +44 1925 767070 www.croftam.co.uk Laser Lines +44 1295 672588 www.laserlines.co.uk Laser Prototypes +44 2890 706940 www.laserproto.com Material Solutions +44 1905 732160 www.materialssolutions.co.uk Performance Engineered Solutions +44 1143 216375 www.pes-performance.com Progressive Technology +44 1635 500480 www.progressive-technology.co.uk Renishaw +44 1453 524524 www.renishaw.com Ricoh 3D +44 0800 3047196 www.rapidfab.ricoh-europe.com SHD Composites +44 1529 307629 www.shdcomposites.com Smith’s High Performance +44 1767 604708 www.smithshp.com USA 3D Systems +1 803 326 3930 www.3dsystems.com Airwolf 3D +1 949 478 2933 www.airwolf3d.com Arris Composites – www.arriscomposites.com DesktopMetal – www.desktopmetal.com Form Labs +1 617 702 8476 www.formlabs.com GE Additive – www.ge.com HP Enterprises +1 888 342 2156 www.hpe.com Incodema +1 607 227 7070 www.fathommfg.com/incodema Markforged +1 866 496 1805 www.markforged.com Orbital Composites +1 510 825 9555 www.orbitalcomposites.com Protolabs +1 877 479 3680 www.protolabs.com Questek +1 847 328 5800 www.questek.com Solvay +1 770 772 8451 www.solvay.com Stratasys +1 800 801 6491 www.stratasys.com Velo3D +1 408 610 3915 www.velo3D.com Vetted Tech +1 315 802 6505 www.vetted3d.com Xact Metal +1 814 205 1505 www.xactmetal.com Xerox +1 866 460 2248 www.xerox.com 45 Uncrewed Systems Technology | June/July 2023
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