About

BALSAM project addresses the problem of surface quality and geometric accuracy in Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM). This project is carried out at the University of Luxembourg, Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology, and in collaboration with An-Najah National University as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. BALSAM project has the scope to strengthen cross-border cooperation in the field of R&D and promote excellent research for LAM and provide room for further studies at the fundamental and applied levels.

To improve LAM, we must monitor various data produced during the process, with particular attention to variables that affect the quality of deposited weld material. Therefore, the first objective of the BALSAM project is to perform a real-time monitoring experiment on the LAM system with a custom-designed input for data generation and acquisition.

In the BALSAM project, a novel method in the field of Direct Data-Driven Control Design (DDDCD) will be developed for layer width and height control to improve the surface quality and geometric accuracy in LAM. The proposed method can form a data-driven control system by monitoring the actual and expected output. To keep the output of the control system excellent, the collected data are used to design directly the controller without the need for the mathematical model of the system.

In this project, to validate the actual performance of the controller, several interference tests will be established. The interface of the process with the control program will be developed by MATLAB/SIMULINK. The proposed control program will provide data acquisition, control algorithm and hardware communication. The experimental setup of the LAM system will be provided by Fraunhofer-IPT. The system consists of diode laser sources with up to 5 kW output power and includes two 3-axis and 5-axis systems as well as a 6-axis robot processing centre.

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