Systems and methods for measuring radiated thermal energy during additive manufacturing

Abstract

An additive manufacturing process for producing a component, the process comprising: adding a layer of metal powder onto a build plane; subdividing the build plane into a plurality of lattice regions, each lattice region having a lattice face; generating a plurality of scans of an energy source (100) over the build plane; generating sensor outputs during each of the multiple scans using an optical sensor; for each of the multiple scans, assigning portions of each of the sensor outputs to a respective lattice region of the plurality of lattice regions; for each of the multiple lattice regions, summing the sensor outputs assigned to the lattice region; determining (812) a thermal energy density for each lattice region based on the summed assigned sensor output for the lattice region and the lattice face of the respective lattice region;and comparing the thermal energy density of each lattice region with a range of thermal energy density values ​​to identify lattice regions out of the majority of lattice regions that are most likely to contain manufacturing defects.

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