Additive Manufacturing Sensor Fusion Technologies for Process Monitoring and Control.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a modern and increasingly popular manufacturing process for metallic components, but suffers from well known problems of inconsistent quality of the finished product. Process monitoring and feedback control are therefore crucial research areas with a goal of solving this problem. To address this concern, X-wave Innovations, Inc. (XII) and the University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) propose to develop an advanced sensor fusion system for monitoring and feedback control of AM processes. The project will be supported by extensive experiments where test components of varying quality will be created using an AM setup by varying different process variables. Process parameter data, along with quality rating of the final product, will be acquired using several different third party sensors. The input data will be used for latent class analysis (LCA) and logistic regression modeling, for classification and feedback regarding the manufacturing quality. A feedback control system will also be developed using the sensor fusion technology to update process variables during manufacture. Upon completion, this technology is expected to be applicable to a wide variety of AM processes for improved efficiency and reduced rejected components due to inferior quality.