Control system and method for additive manufacturing

A quality control method of a stock of a base material for additive manufacture of components, comprising:

• selecting a batch of a base material out of a plurality of indexed batches of the stock, wherein base material assigned to the same batch index is indicative of a quality of the respective base material,
• loading a quantity of base material of the selected batch into a manufacturing system,
• additively manufacturing a component from the base material, wherein the base material of the selected batch is exposed to manufacturing conditions in a build area, and
• increasing the batch index of the base material remaining after the additive manufacture in the build area, wherein a magnitude of the increase reflects an extent of an exposure of the base material remaining to the manufacturing conditions in the build area during the additive manufacturing of the component,
• wherein a control system tracks the base material and its quality by means of the batch index of the base material, during a plurality of manufacturing jobs,
• wherein the quantity of base material loaded into the manufacturing system is entered manually into the control system and a quantity of the base material remaining after the additive manufacture is automatically calculated by the control system, and
• wherein the base material and its quality are tracked in that the stock of the base material is retained in a plurality of containers which are numbered and assigned to a batch index each.