@article{SchoppRohrbachLangeretal.2024, author = {Schopp, Christoph and Rohrbach, Felix and Langer, Luc and Heuermann, Holger}, title = {Detection of welding wire length by active S11 measurement}, series = {IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science}, number = {Early Access}, publisher = {IEEE}, issn = {0093-3813 (Print)}, doi = {10.1109/TPS.2024.3356659}, pages = {1 -- 6}, year = {2024}, abstract = {A novel method to determine the extruded length of a metallic wire for a directed energy deposition (DED) process using a microwave (MW) plasma jet with a straight-through wire feed is presented. The method is based on the relative comparison of the measured frequency response obtained by the large-signal scattering parameter (Hot-S) technique. In the practical working range, repeatability of less than 6\% for a nonactive plasma and 9\% for the active plasma state is found. Measurements are conducted with a focus on a simple solution to decrease the processing time and reduce the integration time of the process into the existing hardware. It is shown that monitoring a single frequency for magnitude and phase changes is sufficient to achieve good accuracy. A combination of different measurement values to determine the length is possible. The applicability to different diameter of the same material is shown as well as a contact detection of the wire and metallic substrate.}, language = {en} }