Developing advanced process monitoring techniques to measure the weld thermal profile and layer height.

This research area has two main goals: (i) to investigate the use of pyrometry to monitor the weld temperature during the deposition process and (ii) layer height measurement using coherent range resolved interferometry (CORRI). When producing a welded part, the main geometrical parameters to control are the effective wall width and the layer height. Utilising in-process layer height measurements a closed loop could be formed in order to potentially control the build parameters and subsequently the finished part geometry. For the layer height measurement, an 8-channel CORRI system is proposed and undergoing development. Each optical sensor will measure in real time the distance from the wall to the sensor and calculate the height of each deposited layer.