Design for Metallic Additive Manufacturing Machine with Capability for “Certify as You Build”

This paper presents the design methodology for Smart Metallic Additive Manufacturing System (s-AMS). In-situ optical diagnostics and its capability to integrate with the process control is a prudent alternative. The two main groups of AM are powder bed (e.g. Laser Sintering) and pneumatically delivered powder (e.g. Direct Metal Deposition [DMD]) to fabricate components. DMD enables one to deposit different material at different pixels with a given height directly from a CAD drawing. The feed back loop also controls the thermal cycle. New optical Sensors are being developed to control product health and geometry using imaging, cooling rate by monitoring temperature, microstructure and composition using optical spectra. Ultimately these sensors will enable one to “Certify as you Build”. Recently the author and his group have developed a technique to analyze the plasma spectra to predict the solid-state phase transformation, which opens up the new horizon for the materials processing and manufacturing. Flexibility of the process is enormous and essentially it is an enabling technology to materialize many a design. Conceptually one can seat in Houston and fabricate in Haifa. This paper discusses the in-situ diagnostic methods and its integration in the design of the machine.