• Andersen, Sebastian Aagaard
• Rio, Sonia Del
• Hansen, Hans Nørgaard
• Pedersen, David Bue

Abstract

Powder-bed fusion [1] differ from conventional manufacturing processes not merely from the characteristics of the layered consolidation of matter from a powdered feed-stock. To an equalextent powder-bed fusion systems are barring from conventional machine tools in that they are of a highly proprietary nature. This counter the dilating understanding of the mechanisms governing the consolidation of metal powder particles in a powder bed fusion setup, as the research scientistis rendered a mere operator of the system from limits drawn by the manufacturer that prohibit full access to the machine controller and to feed-stock sources. From this, the research scientistis faced with a black-boxed manufacturing system which is strongly influencing the direction of research that can be conducted towards validation and characterization of said closed proprietary systems. Disputing this, the Technical University of Denmark has in resent years established a research infrastructure for powder-bed fusion to separate with the operator limitations found in industrially available systems. This paper present a laser modulation and galvanometer control unit that can unshackle the beam control system in powder-bed based systems, Figure 1 and thus allow for full control of the beam. The control unit is comprised of a hardware controller, its embedded firmware and an interface to a hostside job-planner, all of which has been tailored to experimental powder-bed fusion, allowing there search scientist to freely explore scan strategy, pulse modulation, speed, laser power, beam shaping and will be capable of cross-talk to industrial PLC’s and controllers for NC stages such that the powder-handling system can be unshackled as well.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• layered
• powder bed fusion