Control-oriented Mechatronic Design and Data Analytics for Quality-assured Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing

Laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing has seen widespread use with unique advantages in achievable part complexity and processable materials. However, greater applications of this technique remain hindered by insufficient assurance of part quality. A major barrier to such long-felt but not fully realized quality assurance rises from challenges in sensing and control in presence of multi-scale laser-material interactions. This paper presents the design of a full-scale, fully accessible polymer laser powder bed fusion testbed with tailored mechatronic designs for in-situ monitoring and controls. We validated these designs in 3D printing of nylon powders. Along this process, we (1) propose a multi-zone heating algorithm for controlling powder bed temperature and verify its advantages over single-loop control (2) develop a data processing infrastructure that extracts process signatures and filters measurement noises.