Zeiss and EOS developing in-process monitoring for metal powder bed printing

17 Nov 2021

Objective is to develop and market a monitoring system for 3D printing, based on automated neuronal network.

An evenly-distributed powder bed is essential for a stable processing.

Zeiss Industrial Quality Solutions (IQS) and EOS, a developer of manufacturing solutions via industrial 3D printing technology, are to jointly integrate and market the Zeiss AM (additive manufacturing) in-process monitoring for in-situ surveillance of the powder bed for industrial 3D printing with metals.

At this week’s Formnext exhibition (16th to 19th November), Frankfurt am Main, Germany, both companies are to present details of the collaboration.

A uniformly distributed powder bed is essential for a stable and reliable AM process. To detect grooves and elevations in the powder bed with a high degree of certainty, a patented technology of Zeiss to capture height information of the powder bed is used as the core of the product.

The goal is to analyze the acquired 3D information by a trained neural network. As a result, customers receive automatically marked and classified irregularities in the powder bed.

In-process monitoring identifies and classifies defects in the powder bed.

Quality assessment

The cooperation aims at integrating the Zeiss AM in-process monitoring into the DMLS systems of EOS to give customers the possibility of having the powder bed supervised to assess its quality during the printing process, as well as afterwards, and to intervene manually or automatically according to predefined rules.

Dominik Hawelka, Product Line Manager at EOS, commented, “The automated analysis of the powder bed quality and quick reaction to identify defects opens immense potential for cost savings.

“We are, therefore, developing an interface for our EOS M 290 system that enables the communication with a Zeiss solution on our 3D printing system. As an example, information from the Zeiss product can be used to correct detected powder bed defects by triggering a second recoat step.”

Heiko Degen, Business Development Manager Additive Manufacturing Process & Control at Zeiss, commented, “We can contribute with this product to help further industrialize additive manufacturing and in EOS we have found a strong partner.”