Controllable alloying within the process possible
For a stable and therefore reproducible process, in addition to process shielding with ”COAXshield” and the qualifi cation of the powder cone by the »LIsec«, it is also necessary to know all input variables exactly and to control them, if necessary. Especially the continuous measurement of the fed powder quantity has been a great challenge so far.
The ”POWDERscreen” sensor, which is currently being developed at Fraunhofer IWS as part of an EU research project, detects exactly when and how much of the different particles are fed into the melt pool. The fed powder mass can be calculated exactly on this basis. As a result, it is possible to detect fl uctuations in the particle mass fl ow and report them to a downstream controller.
Not only does this signifi cantly increase the process reliability, but it also enables several different powders to be mixed in a targeted manner during the welding process. A discrete-time measurement of the powder mass fl ow also signifi cantly increases the process digitization level and provides data for creating a digital twin of the created component.