Smart Baseplate for Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) has rapidly evolved into a valuable technique for making parts which, at times, cannot be fabricated through conventional machining methods, or for fabrication of small quantities of complex parts. One challenge in the area of AM is the lack of real-time feedback on the fabrication process and the quality of the part being made. This is especially critical given the relatively long periods of time that complex parts can require to construct. Hidden flaws in a part, which can be caused by excessive residual stresses, voids, and inconsistent material deposition can result in the final part being unusable, wasting valuable time, resources, and AM machine life. This proposed work will refine the “smart” additive manufacturing (AM) baseplate for monitoring internal residual stresses and temperatures for multiple metal AM processes. This smart baseplate will allow monitoring unseen problematic areas by building a COTS distributed fiber optic sensing network directly into the baseplate with Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing (UAM). A quality control toolkit will be developed which utilizes the data output from the smart baseplate with other sensors to provide build assessments to end users.