T&L, I agree with you. The report should definitely have not left this much confusion. I reviewed the patent Method and system for monitoring additive manufacturing processes US 20160184893 A1 and I'm no scientist but seems to be that porosity and tensile strength were supposed to be measured some kinda way to establish that baseline dataset. I hope that MC can break it down into layman's terms and explain it. I do believe the SGLB is ahead of the competition; otherwise, Honeywell would not want to further develop PrintRite3D during the DARPA Phase 3 which leads to commercialization. Anyway, Here's a cut and paste of the patent part about porosity and tensile strength.
[0072]
At 803, one or more portions of the part at which the Eulerian and Lagrangian sensor data overlaps (i.e. the witness coupon) are analyzed to help produce a baseline dataset. There are generally three kinds of analysis that could be performed on the witness coupon, or an equivalent region of the part. First, the microstructure could be examined in detail. This includes, but is not limited to, such analyses as grain size, grain boundary orientation, chemical composition at a macro and micro scale, precipitate size and distribution in the case of age hardenable alloys, and grain sizes of prior phases which may have formed first, provided that such evidence of these previous grains is evident. The second category of evaluations that could be conducted are mechanical properties testing. This includes, but is not limited to, such analyses as hardness/micro-hardness, tensile properties, elongation/ductility, fatigue performance, impact strength, fracture toughness and measurements of crack growth, thermos-mechanical fatigue, and creep. The third series of evaluations that could be conducted on witness coupons or equivalent regions of the build are the characterization of defects and anomalies. This includes, but is not limited to, analysis of porosity shape, size and distribution, analysis of crack size and distribution, evidence of inclusions from the primary melt, i.e., those form during the gas atomization of the powders themselves, other inclusions which may have inadvertently entered during the Additive Manufacturing process, and other common welding defects such as lack of fusion. It should also be noted that in certain cases a location of the witness coupon or focus of the pyrometer can be adjusted to provide a more accurate representation of particularly critical portions of the part.
