Resistance based iterative learning control of additive manufacturing with wire

Journal article, 2015

This paper presents successful feed forward control of additive manufacturing of fully dense metallic components. The study is a refinement of former control solutions of the process, providing more robust and industrially acceptable measurement techniques. The system uses a solid state laser that melts metal wire, which in turn is deposited and solidified to build the desired solid feature on a substrate. The process is inherently subjected to disturbances that might hinder consecutive layers to be deposited appropriately. The control action is a modified wire feed rate depending on the surface of the deposited former layer, in this case measured as a resistance. The resistance of the wire stick-out and the weld pool has shown to give an accurate measure of the process stability, and a solution is proposed on how to measure it. By controlling the wire feed rate based on the resistance measure, the next layer surface can be made more even. A second order iterative learning control algorithm is used for determining the wire feed rate, and the solution is implemented and validated in an industrial setting for building a single bead wall in titanium alloy. A comparison is made between a controlled and an uncontrolled situation when a relevant disturbance is introduced throughout all layers. The controller proves to successfully mitigate these disturbances and maintain stable deposition while the uncontrolled deposition fails.