Sigma Labs Inc (SASI)

[silversmith]

From the latest patent application SGLB submitted it is going to be hard for anyone to circumvent the fundamental IPQA steps to go around SGLB. They have written the patent in such a way that even the most basic operations of scanning a build and monitoring a melt pool etc are covered under the patent. If these patents are indeed granted to SGLB it should lock up IPQA as being owned by SGLB. No wonder Rice is so confident about the IP. Below is a small section of the application:

US Patent Application Pub No.: US2017/0266762A1
Date: Sept 21, 2017

All the best,
Silversmith

An additive manufacturing method is disclosed that includes the following: monitoring a heat source scanning across a powder bed using an optical temperature sensor; scanning across different portions of the powder bed with the heat source to produce a metal part; recording the intensity and duration of scans made by the heat source; generating a characteristic curve from the optical temperature sensor for one or more regions of the metal part using the recorded scan duration and intensity data; comparing the characteristic curve of each region with a baseline characteristic curve associated with the respective region; and determining one of the regions is defective when the comparing shows a difference between the characteristic curve of the region and the baseline characteristic curve that exceeds a predetermined threshold.

A manufacturing method is disclosed that includes the following: identifying one or more regions within a part where defects are more likely to occur during the manufacturing method; recording sensor data from laser scans made within the identified one or more regions using an optical temperature sensor; generating a characteristic curve for each of the one or more regions using the sensor data collected for each of the recorded laser scans; comparing the characteristic curves to corresponding a baseline characteristic curves; and determining one or more of the regions is defective when the comparing shows a difference between the characteristic curve of the region and the baseline characteristic curve that exceeds a predetermined threshold.

Another additive manufacturing method is disclosed that includes the following: creating a metal part on a powder bed using a scanning laser; recording sensor data for scans made by the laser in select regions of the metal part using an optical temperature sensor; determining intensity and duration of each of the recorded scans; creating a characteristic curve for each of the regions of the metal part based on the intensity and duration of each scan associated with the region; comparing each of the characteristic curves to a baseline characteristic curve associated with each of the regions; and determining based on the comparing whether any of the regions are likely to have manufacturing defects.