Evaluating Temperature Influence on Low-Cost Piezoelectric Transducer Response for 3D Printing Process Monitoring

Abstract

The 3D printing process deals with the production of three-dimensional objects with defined geometries. However, this manufacturing process has a crucial point established at the beginning of the object manufacturing, where anomalies can occur and compromise the entire object produced. The piezoelectric diaphragm has been studied as an alternative to the conventional acoustic emission (AE) sensor concerning the monitoring of structures and processes. It has in its assembling a ceramic element with piezoelectric properties, which makes its response sensitive to temperature variations. The Pencil Lead Break (PLB) method is widely used due to its efficiency in the characterization of AE sensors. The present work aims to study the influence of temperature on the piezoelectric diaphragm response for the monitoring of the 3D printing process. PLB tests were performed on the glass surface of a 3D printer at three different temperatures, and the raw signal was collected at 5 MHz sample rate. The signal was investigated in the time and frequency domain. The results demonstrate that the frequency response of the sensor is directly influenced by the temperature variations. In addition, the signal amplitude variations occur differently along the entire spectrum, and frequency bands with small and large amplitude variations can be selected for a comparison study. Furthermore, two frequency bands were carefully selected, and the mean error was obtained regarding the reference temperatures of 25 °C and 45 °C. It can be inferred that the piezoelectric transducer has low sensitivity to temperature variation if a proper frequency band is selected, where an acceptable error of 16.9% was obtained.