The paper demonstrates a versatile procedure suitable for industrial implementation of temperature measurement on a hot titanium alloy. The driving force has been the need for an accurate temperature measurement during additive manufacturing using laser welding technology where Ti–6Al–4V-wire is melted. The challenges consider both industrial constraints and the varying emissivity of the surface. Measurements makes use of a narrow bandwidth spot radiation pyrometer and a calibration procedure for estimation of the surface temperature through spectral emissivity estimation. The theoretical results are validated through experiments. A number of difficulties in radiation temperature measurements for metals with varying surface properties are discussed; especially the case of surface oxidation. The uncertainty in temperature reading due to the uncertainty in the emissivity estimate is established along with a model that qualitatively describes surface oxidation. The procedure is expected to be useful for several manufacturing applications where it is important to control high temperatures.

When using a temperaturemeasurementmethod which utilizes spectral information for measuring the temperature of varying emissivity measurands, there is a need for a temperature reference at some point in time. In this work, such a reference is created from the spectral radiance data already used by the temperature measurement method. A method of using knowledge of the measurand material's phase transitions and spectral radiance data as a temperature reference is presented. Through automatical identification of phase transitions from radiance spectra employing signal processing, the temperature is known at a certain instance in time, just like required by the temperature measurement method. Three methods for automatic identification of material phase transitions from spectroscopic data are examined and evaluated. The methods are, based on derivatives, steady-state identification and cross correlation respectively. They are introduced and evaluated using experimental data collected from a solidifying copper sample. All methods proved to identify the phase transitions correctly. The addition of automatic phase transition identification supplements the existing temperature measurement method such that it becomes a stand alone, reference free method for measuring the true absolute temperature of a measurand with varying emissivity.

A method for controlling robotized laser metal wire deposition online by electrical resistance metering is proposed. The concept of measuring the combined resistance of the wire and the weld pool is introduced and evaluated for automatic control purposes. Droplet formation, detachment of the wire from the weld pool and stubbing can be hard to avoid during processing due to the sensitive process and short reaction times needed for making on-line adjustments. The implemented system shows a possible route for automatic control of the process wherein such problems can be avoided automatically. The method proves to successfully adjust the distance between the tool and the workpiece through controlling the robot height position, thus increasing stability of the laser metal wire deposition process.

In order to solve the problem of non-contact temperature measurements on an object with varying emissivity, a new method is herein described and evaluated. The method uses spectral radiance measurements and converts them to temperature readings. It proves to be resilient towards changes in spectral emissivity and tolerates noisy spectral measurements. It is based on an assumption of continuous changes in emissivity and uses historical values of spectral emissivity and temperature for estimating current spectral emissivity.

The algorithm, its constituent steps and accompanying parameters are described and discussed. A thorough sensitivity analysis of the method is carried out through simulations. No rigorous instrument calibration is needed for the presented method and is therefore industrially tractable.

A novel method for converting electromagnetic spectral radiance information into emperature measurements is presented. It allows for varying spectral emissivity of the metallic measurand during the course of the measurement. Such variations are due to e.g. thermal oxidation or temperature dependent emissivity. Based on the assumption that emissivity changes with time and temperature in a continuous manner, it is further assumed that an emissivity estimate at one sample instance can be derived from the estimated emissivity found at the previous samples together with updated spectral information. This leads to successive recalculations of spectral emissivity together with corresponding temperature values. The proposed algorithm has been proven to give accurate temperature estimates from a measurement based on data captured by a standard UV-Vis spectrophotometer even for an oxidizing Ti-6Al-4V specimen in a temperature range between 900K and 1400K. The method however, is not limited to these wavelength- or temperature-ranges.