A novel method for in-process inspection of lattice structures via in-situ layerwise imaging

Lattice structure are among most promising geometrical features to take full advantage of the design freedom enabled by additive manufacturing. However, their several benefits can be adversely affected by local defects and geometrical deviations, which can be hardly identified via ex-situ metrology. This paper is the first to prove that lattice structure inspection can be implemented in-situ, tackling the uncertainty of in-process imaging. The method combines powder bed image segmentation with robust statistical modelling to translate the in-line 3D geometry reconstruction into a 1D representation of unit cell's properties. Results demonstrate the agreement between in-situ modelling and ex-situ ground-truth inspections.