Direct Laser Fabrication of Metallic Components

Recently, a type of direct laser deposition process, called Laser Metal Deposition Shaping (LMDS), has been pursued and developed at Shenyang Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences. The LMDS system consists of four primary components: energy supply system, motion control system, powder delivery system, and computer control system. During this process, a certain alloy is fused onto the surface of a substrate. Laser deposition devices, namely powder feeder, CNC worktable, and laser shutter, are integrated to automatically make any cladding profile possible. Material is deposited by scanning the laser across a surface while injecting metallic powders into the molten pool at the laser focus. The metal part is then fabricated layer by layer. In this way, a number of parts have been produced with the system, which proves that the LMDS process is more robust than previous rapid prototyping techniques, consistently producing fully dense, near-net shaped deposits with excellent material properties just in a single, fully automated production step. The technique is sufficiently promising in that parts can be made from virtually any machinable material which can be deposited incrementally, without the need to prepare dies or use conventional forming equipment or extensive machining and joining processes