Characteristics of laser aided direct metal powder deposition process for nickel-based superalloy

Laser additive direct deposition of metals is a new rapid manufacturing technology, which combines with computer aided design, laser cladding and rapid prototyping. The advanced technology can build fully-dense metal components directly from CAD files without a mould or tool. With this technology, a promising rapid manufacturing system called "Laser Metal Deposition Shaping (LMDS)" is being constructed and developed. Through the LMDS technology, fully-dense and near-net shaped metallic parts can be directly obtained through melting coaxially fed powder with a laser. In addition, the microstructure and mechanical properties of the as-formed samples were tested and analyzed synthetically. The results showed significant processing flexibility with the LMDS system over conventional processing capabilities was recognized, with potentially lower production cost, higher quality components, and shorter lead time