General Electric Company

Hongqing Sun

Jinjie Shi

Richard Roy Worthing, Jr

Pinghai Yang

Ruben Egberto Fairman

Manuel Acosta

Farshad Ghasripoor

Yanzhe Yang

James William Sears

Andrew Ezekiel Wessman

Vijay Shilpiekandula

A tooling assembly for mounting a plurality of components, such as compressor blades, in a powder bed additive manufacturing machine to facilitate a repair process is provided. The tooling assembly includes component fixtures configured for receiving each of the compressor blades, a mounting plate for receiving the component fixtures, and a complementary fixture defining a plurality of voids within which the compressor blades are received when the complementary fixture is mounted to the mounting plate such that less powder is required to fill the powder bed.

Tooling assembly for decreasing powder usage in a powder bed additive manufacturing process

Methods and apparatus for two-dimensional and three-dimensional scanning path visualization are disclosed. An example apparatus includes at least one memory, instructions in the apparatus, and processor circuitry to execute the instructions to identify at least one melt pool dimension using a beam parameter setting, the at least one melt pool dimension identified from a plurality of melt pool dimensions obtained by varying the beam parameter setting, identify a response surface model based on the plurality of melt pool dimensions to determine an effect of variation in the beam parameter setting on the at least one melt pool dimension, output a three-dimensional model of a scanning path for an additive manufacturing process using the response surface model, and adjust the beam parameter setting based on the three-dimensional model to identify a second beam parameter setting.

Methods and apparatus for 2-D and 3-D scanning path visualization

A method of additively printing an extension segment on a workpiece includes pretreating a workpiece-interface of the workpiece using an energy beam emitted from an energy beam source of an additive manufacturing machine, providing a pretreated workpiece-interface having received a pretreatment, with the pretreatment remediating an aberrant feature of the workpiece and/or the workpiece-interface. The method further includes additively printing an extension segment on the pretreated workpiece-interface using an energy beam emitted from the energy beam source of the additive manufacturing machine. The aberrant feature includes one or more aberrant regions of the workpiece-interface having been determined from a digital representation of the workpiece-interface captured by a vision system. The pretreatment includes heat-conditioning at least a portion of the workpiece-interface including the one or more aberrant regions of the workpiece-interface.

Additive manufacturing systems and methods of pretreating and additively printing on workpieces

Methods and apparatus for two-dimensional and three-dimensional scanning path visualization are disclosed. An example apparatus includes a parameter determiner to determine at least one of a laser beam parameter setting or an electron beam parameter setting, a melt pool geometry determiner to identify melt pool dimensions using the parameter setting, the melt pool geometry determiner to vary the parameter setting to obtain multiple melt pool dimensions, and a visualization path generator to generate a three-dimensional view of a scanning path for an additive manufacturing process using the identified melt pool dimensions. The visualization path generator adjusts the laser beam parameters based on the generated three-dimensional view.

Methods of additively printing an extension segment on a workpiece may include pretreating a workpiece-interface of a workpiece using an energy beam from an additive manufacturing machine, providing a pretreated workpiece-interface having received a pretreatment, with the pretreatment remediating an aberrant feature of the workpiece and/or the workpiece-interface. Such methods may additionally include additively printing an extension segment on the pretreated workpiece-interface using the energy beam from the additive manufacturing machine. Exemplary additive manufacturing system for printing an extension segment on a workpiece may include a controller operably coupled to a vision system and an additive manufacturing machine.

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Rexford, NY, United States of America

Hongqing Sun