EOS Joins Forces with plasma
The two companies are developing an online monitoring system to automate the quality of additive manufacturing systems.
Posted: August 8, 2014
With the Melt Pool Monitoring concept, EOS GmbH (Munich, Germany), a technology and market leader for design-driven solutions in the field of additive manufacturing (AM), is developing a high-performance online monitoring solution in cooperation with plasmo Industrietechnik GmbH (Wein, Austria), a global high-tech supplier of automated quality assurance systems. This process monitoring represents decisive added value in terms of risk management and cost reduction for customers.
At the end of 2013, the two companies confirmed their collaboration in the form of a cooperation contract. The aim of this close cooperation is to advance development of the online process monitoring for Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLSTM).
“We have been working successfully with plasmo for some time now,” explains Tobias Abeln, the chief technical director at EOS. “With their know-how they are accompanying us as an expert partner in the field of manufacturing and process monitoring on our road towards additive series manufacturing. The key to successful process monitoring is the intelligence of the system. Many are able to record data. Understanding the data correctly and evaluating it appropriately brings the decisive added value. Our goal is to set new benchmarks in this field and we are very pleased to have found the optimum partner for this in plasmo.”
Adrian Keppler, the chief marketing operator at EOS, adds, “A complete quality assurance chain makes a decisive contribution to boosting trust in a new technology. The decisive factors for our customers on the road towards series manufacturing are reproducible top-quality parts at the lowest costs per part possible. We already offer comprehensive quality assurance processes for our systems upstream and downstream of the manufacturing process. With modular online process monitoring us, we are extending this quality assurance by a further module and ensuring an even greater transparency during our quite complex building process. At the same time we are making a tool available to our customers that they can use to build up their own quality assurance concept.”
“We can look back on 14 years of experience in the field of quality control of laser machining processes in the automotive, aerospace and metalworking industry,” says Thomas Grünberger, the chief technical director at plasmo. “Process know-how from EOS coupled with our expertise in the field of optical quality control systems results in solutions that fulfil the requirements of additive manufacturing perfectly. Our monitoring system, fastprocessobserver, used in connection with the underlying powerful algorithms, is eminently suited for the very high process dynamics of additive manufacturing.”
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