General Electric Company
Method for Detecting Errors and Compensating for Thermal Dissipation in an Additive Manufacturing Process

Abstract:

A system and method of monitoring a powder-bed additive manufacturing process is provided where a layer of additive powder is fused using an energy source and electromagnetic emission signals are measured by a melt pool monitoring system to monitor the print process. The method includes determining thermal conductive properties of the part and the powder bed, e.g., by estimating thermal lag between the printing of adjacent portions of the part or determining thermal resistance using a thermal model of the part and the powder bed. The method may include obtaining a predicted emission signal based at least in part on these thermal conductive properties and comparing with measured emission signals. An alert may be provided or a process adjustment may be made when a difference between the measured emission signals and the predicted emission signal exceeds a predetermined error threshold.