E. Malekipour and H. El-Mounayri
Purdue School of Engineering and Technology,
United States
Keywords: intelligent monitoring and control system, powder-bed fusion process, thermography
Summary:
Despite significant developments in metal powder-bed fusion (PBF) additive manufacturing (AM) process, some frequent thermal anomalies hinder the repeatability and uniformity in mechanical properties of printed parts. Controlling the thermal evolution of the fabrication process is the key toward producing parts with better ultimate quality. The temperature distribution of printing layers has been well recognized as a significant proxy to control the thermal evolution of the fabrication process. Scanning strategy, namely, scanning pattern and process parameters are the main factors for controlling the temperature distribution. In this project, we are developing online thermography and intelligent hybrid control methodology to detect the thermal distribution of a layer under fabrication and modify the scanning strategy subsequently for printing the next layer with a more uniform temperature distribution within a specified range of temperature. This helps to diminish the frequent thermal anomalies such as warpage, distortion, and delamination during the fabrication process and produce a part with higher performance.