SUMMARY

With the maturation of hybrid manufacturing into a commercial scale, industries are pushing to integrate and fully utilize this new technology in their production facilities. This is particularly attractive to industries which utilize complex, often freeform, components which require a large capital investment, such as the aerospace and mold and die industries. However, in service these components may experience unique distortions or wear, and therefore each require a unique repair strategy. Using current on machine inspection equipment such as strain gauge style touch probes, it is possible to capture data to characterize a component’s current state and use it to adapt the repair process on a part by part basis. This work explores the use of an adaptive geometry transformation method designed for a hybrid manufacturing process. The nominal CAD geometry if first rigidly registered to the actual component by using an iterative algorithm to align individual cross sections. Then, these cross sections of the nominal are manipulated to match those of the actual part. The accuracy of this deformation method is first examined by performing surface comparisons on CAD files of the actual and transformed nominal. The accuracy of the repair region is investigated further, ensuring accuracy of a surface blend during repair. Then simulations are completed to explore the potential efficiency gains in both the additive and subtractive phases of the repair process.