Process control tool for additive manufacturing

A process control tool for additive manufacturing (PST for short) is being developed as part of the ZIM cooperation project. The PST will enable consistent quality in the additive manufacturing of PLA-based components by digitizing the printing process and simulating it in advance for each individual printing process. This enables the 3D printer to react to changing parameters and conditions, such as the increasing temperature of the printing bed, and thus adapt the filament application. By using an industrial camera, the filament application is also monitored and printing is aborted if errors occur in the filament application.

The desired process control of the printer is therefore mainly digital. On the one hand, this approach will enable companies to achieve consistent production quality and, on the other hand, significantly reduce costs, as misprints can be detected by the camera and aborted at an early stage, especially in the case of complex geometries. The technology for the PST will be validated using a knife holder of a rotary microtome from laboratory technology. The knife holder itself consists of more than 100 components, some of which can also be replaced by plastic. However, it must be ensured that, for example, the stability of the plastic is constant for each component. This application is therefore ideal for validating the process control tool.

The necessary developments for this are spread across the areas of material characterization, numerics, digital twin, process technology and artificial intelligence. All areas are linked via a process database. The process database is therefore the linchpin of the entire PST.