Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC 2023

Automation as a Key Factor in LPBF Process Quality Assurance
The majority of the current LPBF systems were originally designed for prototyping use, hence they face challenges with reproducibility as well as many manual operations are still needed for their use. Additive Industries has developed the next-generation highly automated industrial additive manufacturing system that not only substantially increases productivity but also overcomes the common reproducibility limits to produce high quality parts
These are the main areas of an LPBF process that can be automated:
• System Automation: Handling (eg. powder handling, buildplate handling, integrated robot, automated bed leveling)
• Optics: Optics validation and calibration (eg. laser-to-laser; laser focus calibration, multibeam tool)
• Application: Multi Laser processing (eg. DLA)
• Data: Print process data with powder bed images using job reporting tool
If the automation on the handling level is one of the keys to achieving the highest productivity (eg. the AI’ integrated robot and automated bed leveling allow users to run up to 8 jobs in a row), the automation applied to the optics validation and calibration is the key for process reliability and quality control.
The presentation will showcase the advantages of a high automated LPBF system on the process and product quality.
The results of our experiments will demonstrate how the automated laser-to-laser calibration process, which aligns lasers to a fixed reference (4 lasers act as 1), ensures repeatable results job after job and between different systems. Results demonstrating the consistency of the material properties within the building area thanks to the automated laser focus calibration will be presented as well.