Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed Peregrine, an AI software package for powder bed 3D printers that assesses the quality of parts in real time.
Peregrine is said to support the advanced manufacturing ‘digital thread’ being developed at ORNL that collects and analyses data through every step of the manufacturing process, from design to feedstock selection to the print build to material testing.
“Capturing that information creates a digital ‘clone’ for each part, providing a trove of data from the raw material to the operational component,” said Vincent Paquit, who leads advanced manufacturing data analytics research as part of ORNL’s Imaging, Signals and Machine Learning group. “We then use that data to qualify the part and to inform future builds across multiple part geometries and with multiple materials, achieving new levels of automation and manufacturing quality assurance.”
The digital thread supports the factory of the future in which custom parts are conceived using CAD and then produced by self-correcting 3D printers via an advanced communications network, with less cost, time, energy and materials. According to ORNL, the concept requires a process control method to ensure that every part rolling off printers is ready to install in applications like cars, airplanes, and energy facilities.