In-Situ Monitoring for Open Low-Cost 3d Printing

3D printing has been widely adopted not only by individuals or people printing in the community, such as the Markers' movement but also by industries from different sectors. Unlike traditional manufacturing technologies, layer-wise manufacturing enables live monitoring of the process and part quality layer after layer through proper sensors installed in the working volume of the 3d printing system. Therefore, from the sustainability perspective, unnecessary waste of material and energy can be avoided by aborting the fabrication when a serious defect is detected in one or more layers. In this paper, a low-cost camera and computer vision algorithms are used for the implementation of an in-situ monitoring system for open 3D printing. After printing each layer, the step of image capture is introduced by modification of the open ISO G-code file. The image of the single part layer is then compared to the information extracted from the G-code for automatic detection of manufacturing defects. The area of missing or exceeding material is computed and shown to the user, which can decide to cancel the job in case of important flaws to avoid any unnecessary waste in terms of material, time and costs.