Application of active thermography for the study of losses in components produced by laser powder Bed fusion

The quality of the components produced is guaranteed by two types of methods, destructive and non-destructive (NDT). In the first case, a product that corresponds to a specific production lot is taken and it is broken to evaluate its properties. Instead, in the case of non-destructive testing, the piece is not sacrificed but the mechanical, electrical, and magnetic properties of the piece in question are obtained through special techniques. These NDT techniques are very interesting in the case of pieces produced using Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. The reason lies in the fact that production volumes are low, and the costs of raw materials and electricity are currently high, therefore production waste is reduced. This work focuses on the use of the active thermography technique as a tool for characterizing the electrical and magnetic properties of a component produced using the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) technique in FeSi2.9% ferromagnetic material. The results of this investigation are very interesting, as they allowed the authors to characterize the losses of this material both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. The choice of this material lies in the fact that it is also widely used in the literature as a material for the construction of AM electric motors. This kind of characterization, exploiting the active thermography technique, is a novelty for this kind of material produced using the LPBF technique.