X-ray computed tomography is a powerful tool to nondestructively inspect additively manufactured parts. Additive manufacturing of metals, especially laser powder bed fusion, is increasingly being adopted for serial production of critical components in aerospace, automotive and various other industries. The technology holds huge potential for more efficient material usage and light weighting of components, among the many advantages. As this new production method is being ramped up and refined in various industry sectors, X-ray tomography is critical to the advancement of the quality of the produced components. X-ray tomography allows the nondestructive evaluation of the structural integrity of the parts produced, which in turn provides confidence in the expected performance of the parts. Besides final inspection of parts for porosity/defects and dimensional tolerances for a pass/fail decision, X-ray tomography also has a critical role to play in advancing and improving the additive manufacturing processes. This process improvement refers to the inspection of small representative coupon samples on a microscopic scale, in order to optimize the process parameters such as laser power, speed, scan strategy and various others. In this work, we describe the evaluation of small solid cube coupon samples and lattice structure coupon samples. These examples are meant to improve the understanding of the potential of X-ray tomography in advancing additive manufacturing processes (in contrast to its usual use for nondestructive testing of final parts), thereby providing support towards qualification of these processes and the parts produced in these processes. X-ray tomography, therefore, plays a key role in the adoption and qualification of high-quality metal additive manufacturing.

中文翻译：

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X 射线断层扫描促进激光粉末床融合增材制造

X 射线计算机断层扫描是无损检查增材制造零件的强大工具。金属的增材制造，尤其是激光粉末床熔合，正越来越多地用于航空航天、汽车和其他各种行业的关键部件的批量生产。该技术在提高材料使用效率和减轻组件重量方面具有巨大潜力，具有众多优势。随着这种新的生产方法在各个行业部门的推广和改进，X 射线断层扫描对于提高所生产组件的质量至关重要。X 射线断层扫描允许对所生产零件的结构完整性进行无损评估，这反过来又为零件的预期性能提供了信心。除了对零件的孔隙率/缺陷和尺寸公差进行最终检查以做出通过/失败决定外，X 射线断层扫描还在推进和改进增材制造工艺方面发挥着关键作用。这种工艺改进是指在微观尺度上检查具有代表性的小试样样品，以优化激光功率、速度、扫描策略等工艺参数。在这项工作中，我们描述了小固体立方体试样和晶格结构试样的评估。这些示例旨在提高对 X 射线断层扫描在推进增材制造工艺中的潜力的理解（与其通常用于最终零件的无损检测相比），从而为这些过程和在这些过程中生产的零件的鉴定提供支持。因此，X 射线断层扫描在高质量金属增材制造的采用和认证方面发挥着关键作用。