Laser Directed Energy Deposition with wire (LDEDw) is one of additive manufacturing technologies where a high-density laser beam, is used to melt wire feedstock metal. During processing, free-form 3D shapes are built by depositing material bead-by-bead and layer-by-layer. LDEDw technology gains interest in industry as it gives new opportunities for machining materials that are hard to process by conventional, subtractive technologies, like for example Ni-based superalloys. The possibility to deposit near-net shape components allows costs savings related to material waste, which is a common issue for milling and turning, as well as it introduces new, improved designs, making the parts lighter.

The laser beam provides a concentrated heat source, allowing for narrow, deep welds and high welding rates. There is a major challenge in this because there is a difficulty for stability and repeatability. So, there should be proper regulation of the deposition and the process parameters by applying a proper monitoring solution that will take measurements for the dimensions of the geometries of weld and beads, thereby finding defects. Only recently, OEMs started providing off-shelf solutions based on the light in the blue range and there is varied limited research preformed within this field.

In this thesis work, an experimental setup using blue laser light is being put to the test. The setup is proved to be effective in extracting precise dimensional information from scanned images acquired in three different speeds, Low – 10 mm/s, medium –15mm/s and high 20 mm/s, when tested with bead-shape and weld-shape objects of Inconel and stainless-steel. In these three translation speeds, the laser setup can provide a good quality laser line that can be used to define the characteristics of the scanned object: the height, the width and the cut-section area, which provide valuable information for the scanned object. The setup when compared to an off-shelf solution, like the micro-Epsilon scanner, is proved to be at least as effective and in many cases even better in measuring the width. Compared to the results of similar work of researchers, the blue laser experimental setup seems to be on par, producing a min error of 0.0149 mm for height and 0.0023 mm for width.