DREAM project to establish automated defect detection in Additive Manufacturing
June 17, 2022
In the international project DREAM (Data dRiven process control in mEtal Additive Manufacturing), Germany’s Fraunhofer ILT and BCT GmbH, as well as Sweden’s AMEXCI and Interspectral, have joined forces to improve the process and quality control for Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) Additive Manufacturing. Over the next two years, the organisations intend to combine their experience to realise a modular platform for automated defect detection in Additive Manufacturing.
In the DREAM project, ILT intends to develop PBF-LB processing strategies to generate usable sensor data. Sensor systems that are specifically designed for usage in PBF-LB are said to increase the resolution of the data and build the foundation for subsequent analyses.
BCT’s team of engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians is focused on automated process chains for additive and subtractive manufacturing, as well as in-process sensor data acquisition. In DREAM, the team hopes to develop algorithms to synchronise the data from multiple sensor sources, combine them with information about the manufactured parts, and prepare them for further analysis.
AMEXCI will apply its previously developed annotation and analysis platform to the pre-processed data to identify potential defects that may occur during the Additive Manufacturing process.
Prior to this project, Interspectral developed AM Explorer, a visualisation software package that makes it possible to fuse, explore and analyse simulation, monitoring, and post build part analysis data from the metal Additive Manufacturing process. In DREAM, the software package will be extended to function with more types and higher resolution data to give PBF-LB users deeper insights into the quality of a part.
