Automated recognition and correction of warp deformation in extrusion additive manufacturing

Abstract

Warp deformation is a common error encountered in additive manufacturing. It is typically caused by residual internal stresses in the manufactured part that arise as material cools. These errors are challenging to prevent or correct as they build over time and thus are only visible long after the actions that caused them. As a result, existing work in extrusion additive manufacturing has attempted warp detection but not correction or prevention. We report a hybrid approach combining deep learning, computer vision, and expert heuristics to correct or prevent warp. We train a deep convolutional neural network using diverse labelled images to recognise warp in real-time. We compute five metrics from detection candidates to predict the severity of warp deformation and proportionately update print settings. This enables the first demonstration of automated warp detection and correction both during printing and for future prints.