CladPlus

Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) is a complex process, which is governed by a large number of parameters. Among these parameters, powder flow rate, laser power, and travel speed are typically used to control the process properties, such as melt pool geometry, temperature, etc. Heat input control in LMD is realized by adjusting laser power using an infrared image sensing camera as feedback. The controller helps to overcome the effects of thermal variations and reduces cladding geometric variations.

Process parameters

First to designe a control system it is mandatory to have a complete knowledge of the proccess. Specifically, in this one exists a big amount of variable parameters such as laser power, powder flow, deposition velocity. In this case, the laser power has been chosen due to it affects straightly in the track width.The rest of parameters were fixed by several test.

Control loop

The control loop is based on a PI controller. The track width is taken from the thermal camera images by image processing. Asynchronously, the control loop calculates the power necessary to reach the setpoint.

Contents

This meta-package contains two packages:

• cladplus_cladviz: contains the working cell description files and the representation files.
• cladplus_control: contains the user interface and control files.

Quick start

To record a bag file with the camera adquisition:

roslaunch cladplus_cladviz cladvid.launch
rosrun rosbag record -O control.bag /tachyon/image

To play a bag file with the camera registration:

roscore
rosrun rosbag play control.bag --clock
roslaunch cladplus_cladviz cladvid.launch sim:=true

To use simultaneously with other Openlmd projects:

roslaunch cladplus_cladviz cladvid_mashes.launch

roslaunch cladplus_cladviz cladvid_proper.launch

Acknowledgement