Method for melt pool monitoring using geometric length
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorThomas Graham Spears
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Abstract
A method of controlling an additive manufacturing process in which a directed energy source is used to selectively melt material to form a workpiece, forming a melt pool in the process of melting, the method comprising: using an imaging apparatus to generate an image of the melt pool comprising an array of individual image elements, the image including a measurement of at least one physical property for each of the individual image elements; from the measurements, mapping a melt pool boundary of the melt pool; computing a geometric length of the melt pool boundary; and controlling at least one aspect of the additive manufacturing process with reference to the geometric length.
Claims15
A method of controlling an additive manufacturing process in which a directed energy source is used to selectively melt material to form a workpiece, forming a melt pool in the process of melting, the method comprising:
- using an imaging apparatus to generate an image of the melt pool comprising an array of individual image elements, the image including a measurement of at least one physical property for each of the individual image elements;
- from the measurements, mapping a melt pool boundary of the melt pool;
- computing a geometric length of the melt pool boundary;
- and
- controlling at least one aspect of the additive manufacturing process with reference to the geometric length, wherein:
- the geometric length is used to create populations of unfaulted and faulted process states, wherein the geometric length of current process is assigned to the populations of unfaulted and faulted process through a multiple model hypothesis test framework.
A method of making a workpiece, comprising:
- depositing a material in a build chamber;
- directing a build beam from a directed energy source to selectively fuse the material in a pattern corresponding to a cross-sectional layer of the workpiece, wherein a melt pool is formed by the directed energy source;
- using an imaging apparatus to generate an image of the melt pool comprising an array of individual image elements, the image including a measurement of at least one physical property for each of the individual image elements;
- from the measurements, mapping a melt pool boundary of the melt pool;
- computing a geometric length of the melt pool boundary;
- and
- controlling at least one aspect of making the workpiece with reference to the geometric length, wherein:
- the geometric length is used to create populations of unfaulted and faulted process states, wherein the geometric length of the current process is assigned to the populations of unfaulted and faulted process through a multiple model hypothesis test framework.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.