The additive manufacturing industry will greatly benefit from a new ASTM International standard that will allow computer-aided design programs, scanners, and 3-D graphical editors to communicate with 3-D printers and additive manufacturing equipment. The standard will answer the growing need within the industry for a standard interchange file format that can work with features such as color, texture, material, substructure, and other properties of a fabricated target object.

The new standard, ASTM F2915—“Specification for additive manufacturing file format (AMF),” was developed by Subcommittee F42.04 on Design, part of the ASTM International Committee F42 on Additive Manufacturing Technologies.

“As additive manufacturing technology is quickly evolving from producing primarily single-material, homogeneous shapes to producing multimaterial geometries in full color with functionally graded materials and microstructures, there is a growing need for a standard interchange file format that can support these features,” says Hod Lipson, Ph.D., associate professor, Cornell University, and an F42.04 member.

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