Part Monitoring and Quality Assessment of Conformal Additive Manufacturing Using Image Reconstruction

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have become almost universal in concept development, prototyping, and education. Advances in materials and methods continue to extend this technology to small batch and complex part manufacturing for the public and private sectors. Despite the growing popularity of digital cameras in AM systems, use of image data for part monitoring is largely unexplored. This paper presents a new method for estimating the 3D internal structure of fused deposition modeling (FDM) processes using image data from a single digital camera. Relative transformations are established using motion capture, and the 3D model is created using knowledge of the deposition path coupled with assumptions about the deposition cross-section. Results show that part geometry can be estimated and visualized using the methods presented in this work.