Online detection of defects in layered manufacturing

Layered manufacturing is an additive manufacturing process where the parts are built layer by layer based on the geometry provided by a CAD system. There are several different technologies for layered manufacturing. We focus on fused deposition of ceramics. Here layers are formed by depositing material through a liquefier-head on adjacent roads in the shape of contours and/or rasters. As this technology is being pushed into new frontiers to build functional parts, the quality of the fabricated parts is becoming a major driving force for improving the technology. We present our preliminary results on an online monitoring system that can be used to detect defects. The ultimate objective is to use such a system to detect and remove the defects on any given layer prior to the next layer