ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Classification of materials for selective laser melting by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

J. Vrábel, P. Pořízka, J. Klus, D. Prochazka, J. Novotný, D. Koutný, D. Paloušek, and J. Kaiser

Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic

E-mail: pavel.porizka@ceitec.vutbr.cz

Abstract: In the present work, we introduce a possibility to improve the rapid prototyping process of selective laser melting (SLM) using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) which provides a material analysis. SLM uses many disparate materials for manufacturing of parts. The elemental composition of raw materials and constructed parts is obtained from a characteristic spectrum, which is a result of LIBS measurement. We compared a high-end LIBS instrumentation with a low-cost one; the latter could be easily implemented to a SLM device. The measured data were processed using multivariate data analysis algorithms. First, the principal component analysis was employed for a visualization and dimensionality reduction. Second, the reduced data set was classified using support vector machines. Moreover, we have suggested a procedure for an automatized classification of materials and parts during the SLM process without any supervision of a spectroscopy-specialist.

Keywords: LIBS ; SLM ; Chemometrics ; Classification ; Multivariate-data analysis 

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-018-0609-1

Chemical Papers 73 (12) 2897–2905 (2019)