Proceedings of the XMO Industrial Seminar 2026: Excellence in Manufacturing and Operations
Keywords
Laser-Direct Energy Deposition (L-DED); high-speed imaging; in-situ monitoring; convergent manufacturing
Tracks
CONVERGENT MANUFACTURING
DOI
10.5703/1288284318680
Abstract
Powder stream quality in laser directed energy deposition (L-DED) is a critical determinant of deposition consistency and final part quality, yet it remains largely uncharacterized in real-time during operation. This paper presents a dual-scale, vision-based in-situ characterization framework that addresses powder stream monitoring at two complementary levels: macro-scale flow quality assessment for real-time process monitoring and micro-scale particle tracking for digital twin data acquisition. Both scales are implemented on a single high-speed camera reconfigured between two resolution and frame-rate settings, eliminating the need for dedicated multi-camera infrastructure. At the macro scale, an OpenCV-based image processing pipeline operating at 1280 × 1024 pixel resolution with 0.935 ms frame intervals extracts per-frame stream quality metrics, including waist width and a spatial symmetry index, from the full powder convergence zone. At the micro scale, a Trackpy-based particle tracking module operating at 640 × 120 pixel resolution with 0.0599 ms frame intervals reconstructs individual particle trajectories and derives velocity magnitude and trajectory angle relative to the nozzle axis. Experiments were conducted under laser-off conditions to isolate powder stream dynamics from melt-pool and plume interactions. Results demonstrate that the two systems together capture process phenomena neither scale can resolve independently, establishing an integrated characterization pipeline that serves the real-time monitoring demands of convergent manufacturing process control and supplies particle-resolved kinematic measurements for digital twin model development and validation.
Multi-Scale In-Situ Powder Stream Characterization for Laser Directed Energy Deposition
Powder stream quality in laser directed energy deposition (L-DED) is a critical determinant of deposition consistency and final part quality, yet it remains largely uncharacterized in real-time during operation. This paper presents a dual-scale, vision-based in-situ characterization framework that addresses powder stream monitoring at two complementary levels: macro-scale flow quality assessment for real-time process monitoring and micro-scale particle tracking for digital twin data acquisition. Both scales are implemented on a single high-speed camera reconfigured between two resolution and frame-rate settings, eliminating the need for dedicated multi-camera infrastructure. At the macro scale, an OpenCV-based image processing pipeline operating at 1280 × 1024 pixel resolution with 0.935 ms frame intervals extracts per-frame stream quality metrics, including waist width and a spatial symmetry index, from the full powder convergence zone. At the micro scale, a Trackpy-based particle tracking module operating at 640 × 120 pixel resolution with 0.0599 ms frame intervals reconstructs individual particle trajectories and derives velocity magnitude and trajectory angle relative to the nozzle axis. Experiments were conducted under laser-off conditions to isolate powder stream dynamics from melt-pool and plume interactions. Results demonstrate that the two systems together capture process phenomena neither scale can resolve independently, establishing an integrated characterization pipeline that serves the real-time monitoring demands of convergent manufacturing process control and supplies particle-resolved kinematic measurements for digital twin model development and validation.