Phase3D has been awarded a two-year 1.25 million USD contract from the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to develop a quality inspection system for cold spray additive manufacturing.
The company, a Chicago-based start-up focused on in-situ inspection for powder-based additive manufacturing, will install the cold spray 3D printing inspection technology at Ellsworth Air Force base in South Dakota. Its goal is to validate a working concept of structured light measurements on a cold spray additive manufacturing and demonstrate the full solution for real-time quality monitoring to support recladding, repair and reinforcement.
Cold spray 3D printing technology has been identified by the Department of Defense as a technology with the potential to produce large components and repair or reclad existing parts at quick speeds. However, it has also recognised the gathering of objective data on the part as it is built as challenging, with Phase3D being tasked to provide high quality, objective data on the process.
Phase3D will work to do this by adapting its flagship Fringe in-situ inspection system to monitor cold spray additive manufacturing deposits to ensure uniform material deposition. The contract will build upon ongoing research by Phase3D and its research collaborators, which includes VRC Metals, who has been named as a subcontractor for the AFRL contract. Phase3D will adapt Fringe to cold spray 3D printing to make it capable of producing the same high-quality quantitative height maps for the metal powder deposited onto the substrate, as well as an intuitive visualisation platform for technicians and engineers. It will also use the project to provide a basis for the creation of specifications and printing guidelines for CASM.
