A Feasibility Study of an Automated Repair Process using Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) with a Machine Integrated Component Measuring Solutio

Sammanfattning: The repair of worn or damaged components is becoming more attractive to manufacturers, since it enables them to save resources, like raw material and energy. With that costs can be reduced, and profit can be maximised. When enabling the re-use of components, the lifetime of a component can be extended, which leads to improved sustainability measures. However, repair is not applied widely, mainly because costs of repairing are overreaching the costs of purchasing a new component. One of the biggest expense factors of repairing a metal component is the labourintense part of identifying and quantifying worn or damages areas with the use of various external measurement systems. An automated measuring process would reduce application cost significantly and allow the applications to less cost intense component. To automate the repair process, in a one-machine solution, it is prerequisite that a measuring device is included in the machine enclosure. For that, different measuring solutions are being assessed towards applicability on the “Trumpf TruLaser Cell 3000 Series”. A machine that uses the Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) technology to print, respectively weld, metal on a target surface. After a theoretical analysis of different solutions, the most sufficient solution is being validated by applying to the machine. During the validation a surface models from a test-component is generated. The result is used to determine the capability of detecting worn areas by doing an automated target-actual comparison with a specialised CAM program. By verifying the capability of detecting worn areas and executing a successful repair, the fundamentals of a fully automated repair process can be proven as possible in a one-machine solution.