Alignment of energy beams in additive manufacturing systems and machines

A system for additively manufacturing a three-dimensional object, the system comprising:

• a build plane configured to support one or more layers of a powder material;
• an irradiation device configured to emit an energy beam having a manufacturing power level selected to additively manufacture a three-dimensional object by irradiating the powder material, the irradiation device comprising a beam source, a beam collimator, one or more beam positioning elements disposed downstream from the beam source, wherein the beam collimator includes at least one beam positioning element of the one or more beam positioning elements configured to adjust a position of the collimator, a beam splitter disposed downstream from the one or more beam positioning elements, the beam splitter configured to split a measurement beam from the energy beam, and one or more beam sensors configured to determine one or more parameters of the measurement beam, the measurement beam propagating along a measurement path to the one or more beam sensors, and the energy beam propagating along an irradiation path to the powder material;
• and
• a controller configured to perform one or more beam alignment operations when irradiating the powder material with the energy beam to additively manufacture the three-dimensional object, the one or more beam alignment operations determined based at least in part on the one or more parameters of the measurement beam;
• wherein the one or more beam alignment operations comprises:
• determining with the one or more beam sensors, position information of the energy beam based at least in part on the one or more parameters of the measurement beam;
• and
• aligning the energy beam with an optical axis of the irradiation device by adjusting a position of the one or more beam positioning elements, including the at least one beam positioning element of the beam collimator, based at least in part on the position information determined with the one or more beam sensors, wherein adjustment of the position of the at least one beam positioning element of the beam collimator is in a direction transverse to the irradiation path.