Proof of concept for implementation of integration of additive manufacturing with vision system monitoring aided with a robot arm

Abstract

In any process a competitive advantage means in saving of time, money, resources and in a process as 3D printing where many aspects can go wrong in the final part as lack of filament, bad adhesion printing or out of tolerance shapes by bad melting. To avoid some of these errors to happen by detecting them and stop the process of a wrong printing saving time, money and resources also with the potential to be scalable to an industrial process. To achieve this a proposed proof of concept of a semiautomatic 3D printer aided with a robot and a vision system to work autonomously with the least human interaction needed and the ability to do process monitoring to ensure quality in pieces and remove mistaken pieces while in the process save resources, this is achieved by Implementation of a synchrony routine in an arduino with programming, putting together decision making and pick and place operations to reduce human interaction. The main contribution is the implementation and architecture to achieve the synchrony of the three technologies 3D printer, vision system, and a robot arm working together to do a continuous process with inspection in real time in a 3D printer.