Production readiness validation approaches for laser powder bed fusion a literature review

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) is one of the most important additive manufacturing (AM) processes for producing high performance and complex metallic elementary parts in critical industries such as aerospace and medical. The guarantee of machine readiness before production in terms of performance is crucial to meet the high quality requirements. However, many existing validation approaches rely on artifacts, destructive tests, or resource intensive characterization workflows. These operational constraints make them unsuitable for daily industrial use. Particular focus is given to the practical challenges faced by manufacturers when implementing these approaches in real production conditions. This study analyzes the existing approaches, evaluating their methodologies, strengths and limits in terms of speed, cost and suitability for industrial production Go/No Go decisions. The review highlights a critical gap in standardized, rapid and non-costly validation methods that can faithfully provide an assessment of the machine’s performance while ensuring part quality. This indicates an urgent need for standardized, pragmatic and industrially deployable validation approaches suitable for routine machine readiness assessment in LPBF serial production environments.