Increased stability in laser metal wire deposition through feedback from optical measurements

Robotized laser metal-wire deposition is a fairly new technique being developed at University West in cooperation with Swedish industry for solid freeform fabrication of fully densed metal structures. It is developed around a standard welding cell and uses robotized fiber laser welding and wire filler material together with a layered manufacturing method to create metal structures. In this work a monitoring system, comprising two cameras and a projected laser line, is developed for on-line control of the deposition process. The controller is a combination of a PI-controller for the bead width and a feed-forward compensator for the bead height. It is evaluated through deposition of single-bead walls, and the results show that the process stability is improved when the proposed controller is used. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.