In order to produce functional parts in Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM), mastering parts quality is a key challenge. The literature highlights the connection between thermal conditions and part defects. Thus, monitoring a thermal parameter, for instance the melt pool in this study, is a crucial indicator to describe parts quality. The paper aims to investigate the feasibility of CMOS camera (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) to track a homothety of the melt pool for parts manufactured by WAAM. In this field, the literature still lacks information concerning this sensor operating in industrial condition, especially for aluminum alloys. An experiment and a numerical method are developed to estimate its sensitivity and robustness. Validation criteria for the method are presented and confirm its interest.
This paper proposes to qualify the minimal quality deviation that can be detected by a near-infrared camera during aluminum Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing. First, a review of the literature is done to highlight the interest of monitoring the melt pool in industrial condition for thermal management during manufacturing. It points out the relevance of the use of a Near-Infrared camera for steels but it has to be demonstrated for aluminum alloys. Indeed, the melt pool of the aluminum is significantly dimmer and less distinct than the melt pool of the steels. An experimental design is proposed to qualify the minimal quality deviation that can be detected on a thin wall. The chosen default to correlate with the thermal deviation is the width of the wall. A method is proposed to extract a thermal metric from the camera image and to analyze its sensitivity to a width deviation of the wall. The paper shows the correlation between the width of the wall and the thermal metric for different heat conditions. Moreover, the thermal metric is sensitive to width deviation either at the wall scale and at the bead scale. It indicates the relevance of a near-infrared camera to detect heat accumulation induced width deviation during Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing of aluminum alloy.
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