Software tools for very high deposition rate additive manufacturing

Purpose and goal:

Procada develops technology for additive manufacturing with wire and laser. Customers demand high build speed and full traceability of process data to qualify critical metal components. Logging of this data is central to Procada´s offer.

Hardware and process control have previously demonstrated speeds of 10 kg/h, but the software needs improvement. The project aims to develop a rapid software platform for data logging and HMI, with a prototype being tested and refined before full functionality is implemented and tested in a complete system.

Expected results and effects:

The project will lead to a software product being developed, verified and offered to the customer. This complements Procada´s previous offerings in process control and hardware to provide a more complete offer for customers looking to use very high deposition rate metal additive manufacturing. The software product will also be able to be offered to customers with, for example, welding processes that value operator interaction and traceability in process data.

Approach and implementation:

The project will use agile project methodology and therefore as a first step develop an MVP that is used for concept refinement. In a second step, existing functionality in a previous software will be transferred to the new improved software architecture and in a third and final step, the system will be tested with both conventional software testing and Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) testing.