SBIR-STTR Award

This project aims to make Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing a practical tool for supply chain management for the Defense Logistics Agency.The key step is developing process standardization to make LBPF quality vendor independent. This project will seek to demonstrate the use of a promising high speed melt pool monitoring device as a practical means to establish such process standardization. The do this, the R&D team will first identify a LPBF commercial machine model that is of the most value to the DoD (i.e. is used most heavily).Then an open-architecture LPBF system, equipped with the melt pool sensor, will be configured to replicate the build conditions and capability of the target commercial system.Experiments will be conducted to show that the sensor identifies critical process control information in this configuration, and then also in an alternative configuration.The sensors quantification of the difference in performance between the two configurations will then (in Phase II) serve as input to effect process modifications in each configuration, via closed loop feedback control, to equalize the build performance of the systems, thereby showing a practical method for build standardization.

This SBIR will demonstrate coaxial thermal imaging using the Stratonics ThermaViz® sensor as a uniquely effective tool for tracking process metrics, at high-speed, during laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). The Phase II project will then develop this sensing technique for LPBF process qualification and closed-loop control. The key is integrating ThermaViz into UTC’s AMSENSE® in situ monitoring architecture, which enables automated data collection, tracking X/Y position of the melt pool on the build surface, and implementing data processing algorithms on time scales suitable for closed-loop control. Next the team will develop and implement algorithms for ThermaViz data that quantify build quality and enable real-time control. In parallel to the algorithm development, the research team will finalize the design of a low-cost “industrial grade” coaxial camera that can be implemented quickly across the DoD supply chain in Phase III, and then mount the final sensor on an EOS M280 system to demonstrate process control and qualification on the brand of LPBF system that is most relevant to the supply chain. Finally, the team will demonstrate that build performance can be equalized across disparate LPBF systems and on a design of interest to our supply chain partner, Honeywell.