Department - Author 1
Mechanical Engineering Department
Degree Name - Author 1
BS in Mechanical Engineering
Date
6-2017
Primary Advisor
Lee McFarland
Abstract/Summary
The objective of this project is to create a part failure detection sensor system that will allow Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to detect cracking during the building process. Due to the time intensive nature of the SLM process, a part that may take 14 days to create could have a defect within the first hour of manufacturing, but the operator would have no idea that there was a fault in the manufacturing until culmination of the process. The proposed system will allow the operator to know when in the process the part became defective, and therefore save resources and machine time. There is currently no solution to this issue, so any progress made by the Cal Poly team will greatly enhance the understanding of the failure modes that occur. In addition to preventing wastage of time and resources, by determining when in the process the failures occur, the engineers and technicians working with this technology will be able to better understand what features of the design are contributing to failure. Since there is currently no diagnostic data available for this process, the engineers working with parts that fail are required to reverse-engineer the causes of any failures, and modify the design based on their analysis. With the results from this project, it will be clear when during the build a failure occurred, therefore easy to tell what the cause of failure was.
URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/mesp/358