Headlines News 3D Printing Printing
New ISO/ASTM 52915 file format for 3D printers

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, works by depositing material in layers, building up an object solely from the plans on a file. Until now, that information has only been encoded using a stereolithography file format, or STL. A newly-published standard, ISO/ASTM 52915, will replace STL with the Additive Manufacturing File Format (AMF).

ISO/ASTM 52915, Specification for additive manufacturing file format (AMF) Version 1.2, published in May, was developed by a group of experts in ISO’s technical committee on additive manufacturing, ISO/TC 261, in partnership with ASTM International.

“The AMF format offers great potential to support the further development of the AM sector and will become increasingly important in the industry in the coming years,” said Dr. Christian Seidel, committee chair and professor for manufacturing technologies and additive manufacturing. “AMF describes an object in such a general way that any machine can build it to the best of its ability, and as such is technology independent.”

Seidel also noted that the standard is both backwards compatible, allowing any existing STL file to be converted, and future compatible, allowing new features to be added as advances in technology allow.

The new jointly developed ISO/ASTM standard specifies the requirements for the preparation, display and transmission for the AMF. “When prepared in a structured electronic format, strict adherence to an extensible markup language (XML) schema supports standards-compliant interoperability,” notes the ISO. It does not, however, specify any explicit mechanisms for ensuring data integrity, electronic signatures and encryptions.

The new standard can be purchased from the ISO member in your country, or from the ISO Store.