Plasmo Industrietechnik and EOS have announced a partnership to develop a monitoring system for the observation of the melt pool used during additive manufacturing processes. The proposed system is described as an added value technology that manages risk and lowers costs for customers. It is also another step towards additive series manufacturing.
The two companies agreed to collaborate at the end of 2013 to advance development of online process monitoring for direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), the technology used in EOS’ metal AM machines.
Dr Adrian Keppler, sales and marketing director at EOS, said: ‘A complete quality assurance chain is a key contributor to boosting trust in a new technology. What our customers are looking for in series manufacturing are reproducible, top-quality components at the lowest possible cost per part.’
Keppler continued: ‘We already offer comprehensive quality assurance for our systems upstream and downstream of the manufacturing process. With modular online process monitoring, we are extending this quality assurance and ensuring an even greater transparency during the quite complex component building process.’ He concluded: ‘At the same time, we are making a tool available to our customers that they can use to establish their own quality assurance.’
Dr Thomas Grünberger, technical director at Plasmo commented, ‘We can look back on 14 years of experience in the field of quality control of laser machining processes in the automotive, aerospace and metalworking industry. Process know-how from EOS coupled with our expertise in the field of optical quality control will result in solutions which fulfil the requirements of additive manufacturing perfectly. Our monitoring system Fast Process Observer used with the underlying powerful algorithms is eminently suited to the very high process dynamics of AM.’
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