Sigma Labs Inc (SASI)

[jpi]

http://immijournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40192-016-0045-4

Commercial systems
From a commercial manufacturing standpoint, in-process sensing technology for additive manufacturing is still in its infancy. Most systems discussed in this article have been employed only in an academic research environment. With the exception of systems designed for monitoring of traditional laser welding processes, most commercially available SLM process monitoring systems have been only recently introduced to the market. EOS GmbH announced the addition of a melt pool monitoring suite for its laser powder bed metal machines at the 2015 formnext trade show [75]. A summary of some of these systems is provided in Table 3. The “voice of process” sensor modalities described in the previous section are all well represented. As should be apparent, each modality has its technical advantages and drawbacks. Key to the success of any of these will be the analytics applied to the process signals to correlate them to process quality metrics. Other factors of importance in evaluating commercial systems will include cost, the ease with which they are integrated with the additive machine, and their ease of use in a manufacturing environment.
Table 3
Summary of select commercial SLM and laser weld process monitoring systems
Company
System name
B6Sigma [78]
PrintRite3D®
Sensor suite (SENSORPAK™) still under development, but includes optical, thermal, and spectral “off the shelf” sensors. INSPECT™ software links process data to quality metrics