Method and apparatus for continuously refreshing a recoater blade for additive manufacturing
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorsTodd Jay Rockstroh, Zachary David Fieldman, Theodore Anderson
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present disclosure generally relates to additive manufacturing systems and methods involving a mechanism for feeding in a desired amount of fresh recoater blade. This can be accomplished by, for example, spooling the fresh blade material from a spool. This helps prevent work stoppage when a portion of a recoater blade becomes damaged. As such, the present disclosure also relates to a system and method for detecting whether a recoater blade is damaged, and if there is damage, then causing a fresh blade portion to be fed in.
Claims10
A method for fabricating a desired object, comprising:
- (a) passing a recoater arm comprising a continuous integral feed recoater blade over a powder bed to provide a layer of powder over the powder bed;
- (b) irradiating at least part of the layer of powder in the powder bed to form a fused region of an object;
- (c) repeating steps (a) and (b) until the desired object is formed in the powder bed;
- and
- (d) feeding, from a feed unit to the recoater arm, a new blade portion of the continuous integral feed recoater blade along at least a portion of a length of the recoater arm for replacing a blade portion of the continuous integral feed recoater blade with the new blade portion;
- wherein the method for fabricating the desired object further comprises detecting whether the blade portion or the object is damaged, via a camera attached to the recoater arm.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.