Application and development of Imaging and diagnostics for the real time analysis of metal based additive manufacturing.

Laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing is an industrially attractive technology due to the geometric freedom in part design and the ability to manufacture components with structures impossible to achieve via conventional machining techniques. The process is unfortunately slow and plagued with defects due to the non deterministic nature of the laser powder interaction. A novel multi beam arrangement has been developed to investigate different conduction mode beam scanning strategies for scaling towards high throughput manufacture.

Interrogation of the process will be carried out at high temporal and spatial frequencies to improve understanding of the laser powder interaction, and the findings related to build rate and part quality. Additionally sensing systems suitable for fitting to a commercial style machine will be developed for in build monitoring. The in build data-sets will be related to the quality of the final part using X ray computed tomography scans, and in process flags which are indicators of defects in the final part identified.