Design of a Multi-sensor Monitoring System for Additive Manufacturing Process

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology is becoming increasingly feasible in industrial applications. Although AM systems continue to improve, the lack of repeatability and stability of these technologies remains an obstacle to industrial breakthroughs. Thus, AM process monitoring equipment has to be set up to supervise product quality and detect defects. This study first reviews the various categories of defects, relevant AM process signatures, and optical monitoring methods of powder bed fusion processes proposed so far. Then, according to the detection requirements, an optical process monitoring system based on multiple sensors is proposed, which is equipped with a white light imaging channel, an infrared imaging channel, and a polarization imaging channel. The aberrations can be optimized using Zemax software by appropriately selecting the optimization function operands. Thus, the design requirements for the multi-sensor monitoring system for the AM process can be achieved. © 2020, International Society for Nanomanufacturing and Tianjin University and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.