{"id":214657,"date":"2025-05-24T13:08:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T18:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/3d-printers-leave-hidden-fingerprints-that-reveal-part-origins"},"modified":"2025-05-24T13:08:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T18:08:15","slug":"3d-printers-leave-hidden-fingerprints-that-reveal-part-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/3d-printers-leave-hidden-fingerprints-that-reveal-part-origins","title":{"rendered":"3D printers leave hidden \u2018fingerprints\u2019 that reveal part origins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/3d-printers-leave-hidden-fingerprints-that-reveal-part-origins.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new artificial intelligence system pinpoints the origin of 3D printed parts down to the specific machine that made them. The technology could allow manufacturers to monitor their suppliers and manage their supply chains, detecting early problems and verifying that suppliers are following agreed upon processes.<\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers led by Bill King, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has discovered that parts made by <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/additive+manufacturing\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">additive manufacturing<\/a>, also known as 3D printing, carry a unique signature from the specific machine that fabricated them. This inspired the development of an AI system which detects the signature, or \u201cfingerprint,\u201d from a photograph of the part and identifies its origin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are still amazed that this works: we can print the same part design on two identical machines \u2013same model, same process settings, same material\u2014and each machine leaves a unique fingerprint that the AI model can trace back to the machine,\u201d King said. \u201cIt\u2019s possible to determine exactly where and how something was made. You don\u2019t have to take your supplier\u2019s word on anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new artificial intelligence system pinpoints the origin of 3D printed parts down to the specific machine that made them. The technology could allow manufacturers to monitor their suppliers and manage their supply chains, detecting early problems and verifying that suppliers are following agreed upon processes. A team of researchers led by Bill King, a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}