Benchmarking spatial resolution in electronic imaging for potential in-situ Electron Beam Melting monitoring



Wong, Hay ORCID: 0000-0003-1717-2653, Neary, Derek, Jones, Eric, Fox, Peter ORCID: 0000-0003-3442-8630 and Sutcliffe, Chris
(2019) Benchmarking spatial resolution in electronic imaging for potential in-situ Electron Beam Melting monitoring. ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING, 29. p. 100829.

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Abstract

Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is an increasingly used Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique employed by many industrial sectors, including the medical device and aerospace industries. In-situ EBM monitoring for quality assurance purposes has been a popular research area. Electronic imaging has recently been investigated as one of the in-situ EBM data collection methods, alongside thermal / optical imaging techniques. So far, the disseminations focus on the design of an electronic imaging system and the ability to generate electronic images in-situ, experiments are yet to be carried out to benchmark one of the most important features of any imaging systems – spatial resolution. This article addresses this knowledge gap by: (1) proposing an indicator for the estimation of spatial resolution which includes the Backscattered Electrons (BSE) information depth, (2) estimating the achievable spatial resolution when electronic imaging is carried out inside an Arcam A1 EBM machine, and (3) presenting an experimental method to conduct a knife edge test with the EBM machine. Analyses of experimental results indicated that the spatial resolution was of the order of 0.3 to 0.4 mm when electronic imaging was carried out at room temperature. It is believed that by disseminating an analysis and experimental method to estimate and quantify spatial resolution, this study has contributed to the on-going quality assessment research in the field of in-situ monitoring of the EBM process.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Electron Beam Melting, In-situ monitoring, Quality control, Electronic imaging, Spatial resolution
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 13 Aug 2019 09:19
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 00:31
DOI: 10.1016/j.addma.2019.100829
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3051536