US 11,813,798 B2
Additive manufacturing systems and methods of pretreating and additively printing on workpieces
Jinjie Shi, Mason, OH (US); Richard Roy Worthing, Jr., Liberty Township, OH (US); and Hongqing Sun, Rexford, NY (US)
Assigned to General Electric Company, Schenectady, NY (US)
Filed by General Electric Company, Boston, MA (US)
Filed on Mar. 16, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/696,229.
Application 17/696,229 is a continuation of application No. 16/434,384, filed on Jun. 7, 2019, granted, now 11,298,884.
Prior Publication US 2022/0227061 A1, Jul. 21, 2022
Int. Cl. B29C 64/393 (2017.01); B29C 64/153 (2017.01); B29C 64/35 (2017.01); B29C 64/268 (2017.01); F01D 5/00 (2006.01); B33Y 10/00 (2015.01); B33Y 30/00 (2015.01); B33Y 50/02 (2015.01); B33Y 80/00 (2015.01); B29L 31/08 (2006.01)
CPC B29C 64/393 (2017.08) [B29C 64/153 (2017.08); B29C 64/268 (2017.08); B29C 64/35 (2017.08); F01D 5/005 (2013.01); B29L 2031/08 (2013.01); B33Y 10/00 (2014.12); B33Y 30/00 (2014.12); B33Y 50/02 (2014.12); B33Y 80/00 (2014.12); F05D 2230/80 (2013.01)] 16 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of additively printing an extension segment on a workpiece, the method comprising:
pretreating a workpiece-interface of a workpiece using an energy beam emitted from an energy beam source of an additive manufacturing machine, providing a pretreated workpiece-interface having received a pretreatment, the pretreatment remediating an aberrant feature of the workpiece and/or the workpiece-interface; and
additively printing an extension segment on the pretreated workpiece-interface using an energy beam emitted from the energy beam source of the additive manufacturing machine;
wherein the aberrant feature comprises one or more aberrant regions of the workpiece-interface having been determined from a digital representation of the workpiece-interface captured by a vision system;
wherein the pretreatment comprises additive-leveling a first portion of the workpiece-interface comprising a first aberrant region and melt-leveling a second portion of the workpiece-interface comprising a second aberrant region;
wherein the pretreatment comprises heat-conditioning at least a portion of the workpiece-interface comprising the one or more aberrant regions of the workpiece-interface by modifying a grain structure of the workpiece at or near the workpiece-interface; and
wherein the additive-leveling and the heat-conditioning pretreatments are performed concurrently.