ZEISS and EOS, a leading supplier for responsible manufacturing solutions via industrial 3D printing technology, have declared their intent to jointly integrate and market the ZEISS AM in-process monitoring for in-situ surveillance of the powder bed for industrial 3D printing with metals. At the Formnext exhibition from 16th to 19th November, both companies will present details of the future 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.
The cooperation aims at integrating the ZEISS AM in-process monitoring into the DMLS® systems of EOS to give customers the possibility to have the powder bed supervised to assess its quality during the printing process as well as afterward and to intervene manually or automatically according to predefined rules.
“We are confident that ZEISS can contribute with this product to help further industrialize additive manufacturing and that with EOS we found a strong partner for a successful market entry” explains Heiko Degen, Business Development Manager Additive Manufacturing Process & Control at ZEISS.
“The automated analysis of the powder bed quality and quick reaction to identify defects opens the immense potential for cost savings. We are, therefore, developing an interface for our EOS M 290 that enables the communication of 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,” adds Dominik Hawelka, Product Line Manager at EOS.
This content was originally published on the Zeiss website.
