In Situ Visual Quality Control in 3D Printing

In the past decade, additive manufacturing technology has gained an immense attention in numerous research areas and has already been adopted in a wide range of industries relevant to transportation, healthcare, electronics and energy. However, the presence of defects and dimensional deviations that occur during the process hinder the broad exploitation of 3D printing. In order to enhance the capabilities of this emerging technology, online quality control methodologies and verifications of the manufacturing process are necessary to be developed. In the present article, a low cost in-situ vision-based monitoring technique applied in Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printing technology is introduced. An optical scanning system was integrated in a commercial 3D Printer in order to scan and validate the performance of the procedure. The proposed methodology monitors the FDM process and correlates the theoretical 3D model with the manufactured one. This technique can be utilized in various additive manufacturing technologies providing integrity and reliability of the process, high quality standards and reduced production costs.