Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

8-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering (MSE)

Department

Manufacturing Engineering

First Advisor

Farid Ahmed

Second Advisor

Jianzhi Li

Third Advisor

Benjamin Peters

Abstract

Process control has been a critical component in today's manufacturing industry. Industrialists nowadays want reliable control to assure precision manufacturing. Modern control systems must be more dynamic, so that any needed modifications may be made quickly to accomplish the desired product change. For innovative research and development, system customization is critical to ensure freedom for experimental works. In addition, full control of manufacturing systems is necessary to realize and implement Industry 4.0. Often, it is difficult to achieve such control due to limited access to proprietary equipment. To this end, this thesis focuses on developing a custom control platform for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) and proprietary equipment. In this work, a total control platform for a custom LPBF testbed has been developed and demonstrated. Features in this control platform include tool path generation for galvo-based laser scanning, in-situ laser process parameter control, emergency process shutdown, and feedback control for the in-house sensing system. As explained earlier, limited access to proprietary equipment hinders full control of the system, hence, often it is difficult to automate those machines and the production without human intervention. Besides, the occurrence of sudden faults needs to be corrected faster, which is sometimes challenging for human operators. To this end, a proprietary software automation system is developed to automate a task sequence for laser material processing using TCP/IP communication. Also, a gesture control feature is integrated with the control system to enable gesture-driven instructions. The developed control platform is expected to facilitate running custom experiment using the LPBF testbed such as implementation of random scanning pattern, in-situ layer/scan wise laser process parameter change, and close-loop feedback for process monitoring and control. In addition, the control of proprietary equipment will help develop robust control platform where Application Programming Interface (API) access to the equipment is limited.

Comments

Copyright 2023 Md Shahriar Forhad. All Rights Reserved.

https://go.openathens.net/redirector/utrgv.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/developing-control-system-manufacturing-processes/docview/2862098828/se-2?accountid=7119

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