Client
M-ERA.NET is an EU funded network which has been established to support and increase the coordination of European research programmes and related funding in materials science and engineering.
Partners
- Fraunhofer IPT: Fraunhofer IPT is a research institute with focus on production technology. Central tasks are the research and development as well as the optimization of innovative production technologies and its transfer into the industrial environment.
- Laserco: Wear protection for metals through laser cladding and diamond coatings characterize the company’s core competencies. Cladding of new items, refurbishing, item repair, heat treatment of carbon steel items or reconstruction are part of Laserco´s portfolio.
- Precitec: Precitec is the specialist for laser material processing and optical measuring technology.
- Dinse: Dinse is a wire feeding manufacture with almost 60 years of experience. By now automation and laser welding become as important in their portfolio as these traditional products
- Quada: Quada is well known especially as a problem solver in the branch of laser cladding wires.
Project
TopCladd: Adaptive laser cladding for precise metal coating based on inline topography characterization
Via laser cladding a laser beam melts a metal wire onto a components surface, leading to its strengthening, improvement or even repair. The major objective of TopCladd is to secure the process stability and quality by the implementation of an inline process monitoring and real-time adaptive feedback controlled laser process, based on inline geometrical measurement by low coherence interferometry (LCI) with an optimized laser cladding head and wire feeding system, process modelling and an optimal data processing. The system increases the accuracy of process parameters and decreases the process non-productive time, raising the overall production performance.
DELTATEC has been selected to
- Design and implement the process control which has interfaces with all modules in the system, records tomographic data and parameters data, and controls process parameters according to “processed images”
- Implement the data and image processing to evaluate the cladding bead quality
- Process modeling using experimental tests and neural system training
Challenge(s)
The main challenges are
- Interfacing with all other partners’ modules
- Synchronizing measurement data and parameters values in recorded data
- Record data in a cloud storage to allow distant interactions with the tests facilities
- Presenting an ergonomic user interface for tagging specific features in the cladding bead
- Implementing specific and state of the art data and image processing
- Optimizing the image processing for minimal latency
- Conduct and organize a large set of tests to train the neural system
Solution
Thanks to its large embedded hardware design, system design and image processing experience, DELTATEC is able to propose and develop a complete solution to achieve the goals.
The system uses a PC and 2 boards to control the process, collect, synchronize and record data. Once collected, data are processed to induce updates of process parameters, closing the loop of the process.
