Research on Measuring and Control System of Metal Powder Laser Shaping

The metal powder laser shaping (MPLS) has been widely used for manufacturing functional parts in recent years. In the MPLS process, a lot of process variations affect the quality and precision of the manufactured parts. The temperature field and cladding height are two key parameters that reflect the manufacturing conditions. In the temperature field measuring system, the infrared images of the molten pool are taken by a CCD camera and the image data are analyzed by the software design. The colorimetric method is applied to the temperature measurement. Image processing of the molten pool makes the temperature distribution seen clearly and extracts the characteristic parameters for feedback control system. The MPLS process builds metal parts in a layer-by-layer accumulating fashion. So it is important to manufacture every layer with a uniform height. The methods for measuring cladding height are presented. The powder flow rate and scanning velocity are effectively used as controlled parameters in the control system. Experimental results validate the good performance of the measuring and control system