Online monitoring of manufacturing processes by acoustic emission

Abstract

For many years, Cetim has been working on on-line control methodologies for manufacturing processes in order to reduce or even eliminate controls on finished parts. After the first works by conducted by the Acoustic Emission technique (AE) on the monitoring of sheet metal stamping process [1], the monitoring of new manufacturing processes such as metal cutting, wire drawing, spot welding, forging and especially are under study. In the present paper, the results of acoustic emission monitoring carried out on additive manufacturing production and also wire drawing are presented. For both processes on-line control during manufacturing is particularly important. Due to the geometric complexity of the parts produced by additive manufacturing, suitable nondestructive testing (NDT) means are limited. In addition, these are generally small series or even single parts with a long manufacturing time. For their part, wire drawing manufacturers currently have only visual inspection, unable to detect fine scratches on the wire at the output of production.