Technology: Optical In-Situ Monitoring For Metal Additive Manufacturing

O’Dowd is the founder of Phase3D. The inception of O’Dowd’s thesis in optical monitoring techniques for Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM) came from previous research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He learned about the iterative R&D process when he programmed live computer vision functionality for an ultrasonic laser-based inspection system. He returned to the Lab after his undergraduate degree to develop microprocessing hardware and software for a mode shape measurement electronic speckle pattern interferometer, which also utilized computer vision. After that, he was hooked on image processing, and integrating cameras and algorithms. He was eager to marry the computer vision techniques he’d developed to making and developing a projection based in-situ monitoring technique. He earned a Ph.D. in Structural Health Processing at the University California San Diego in September 2021.