Design and development of a system to detect defects in 3D printing through analysis of layer images

3D Printing is a process for making a physical object from a three-dimensional digital model, typically by laying down many successive thin layers of a material. It brings a digital object (its CAD representation) into its physical form by adding layer by layer of materials. Like any other process, no matter how perfect we try to make them, defects do creep in. As such, defects like missing filament, abnormal printing etc. could be present in our product. This thesis describes the idea of finding defects during the ongoing process of 3D printing on each layer. The goal is achieved by developing a system to be attached to any open 3D printer with minimal interference on its functionality or parameters. The first step is to analyze the given 3D printer to extract the working parameters mainly start-up conditions and stopping conditions. The work is divided into four major sections which include creating a reference image from Gcode, modifying Gcode file according to the image acquisition system, followed by acquisition of layer images from actual 3D print and finally comparing the reference image and layer image in order to find any possible defects. In this study, the Matlab codes are developed to generate the image and to analyse with layer image. And the integration of the system has also been proposed. Using these concepts the results were analyzed and are mentioned in the following chapters.