What Is Laser Cladding？
The method of laser cladding metals and alloys involves using a laser as a heat source to melt the addition material and form a coating on the surface of a product. Powder injection is commonly used to produce a protective coating for better functioning as well as to repair damaged or worn surfaces. Laser cladding extends the life of equipment and machinery whose parts are subjected to corrosion, wear, or impact.
- High-quality parts made from base materials are less expensive, with the upper layer tailored for the purpose.
- Heat input on the component is kept to a minimum, which eliminates distortion effects.
- Fewer layers, greater thickness control, and reduced heat input due to less interface chemical dilution
- Pre-cleaning the item using a laser improves adhesion and decreases porosity.
- Simple to automate and repeat
Advantages of Fiber Laser Cladding Technology
Process Uniformity
Fiber lasers provide reproducible, high-yielding products by delivering consistent, steady laser heating. In contrast to alternative technologies that experience power level variations and deterioration over time, IPG solid-state fiber laser technology offers repeatable performance without the need for recalibration and modification.
Power Efficiency Reduces Costs
Cladding consumes a significant amount of energy over long periods of time, hence energy efficiency has a significant impact on manufacturing costs. IPG fiber lasers feature the industry’s greatest wall plug efficiency, which means that more of your power is used to clad components rather than creating wasteful equipment heat that must be removed.
Robust and Reliable Equipment
Cladding centers are often severe industrial facilities with high dust levels and difficult operating conditions for equipment. IPG YLS Fiber Lasers for cladding applications are totally solid state and housed in NEMA 12 air-conditioned and sealed cabinets, which adds to the unit’s resilience.
What Is Laser Additive Manufacturing？
Additive manufacturing technologies have already spawned a completely new sector for creating 3D solid items by layering individual layers of material. These methods all make use of recent major advances in processing power, motion, and process control to deposit a variety of materials correctly and at high speed. LMD (Laser Metal Deposition) and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) are two methods that use HaiTian lasers. Stereolithography (SLA) is another laser technology that employs lower wavelength lasers to locally photopolymerize a liquid. The phrase 3D printing was originally intended to refer to a non-laser method known as Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), but it has lately gained popularity and is now occasionally used to refer to the whole industry.
Selective Laser Melting
The sole difference between Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and the closely similar Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process is that with SLM full melting of the powder is achieved rather than only fusing the powder together as in the SLS approach. As a result, SLM creates totally dense metallic components with superior mechanical qualities. All of these methods rely on a bed of powder that is renewed after each laser-fused layer. A comparable powder bed technology is Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). For these applications, single-mode fiber lasers with power ratings ranging from several hundred Watts to one kW are employed.
Laser Metal Deposition
Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) is the second process that makes use of fiber lasers. In this situation, a powder is delivered co-axially through a nozzle into the focussed laser spot, allowing for the production of completely dense functioning metallic components.
With the advancement of materials and methods, additive manufacturing technologies may now generate completely functional molds or small batches of functional components straight from CAD data. Because larger AM components might take several hours to produce, the stability and dependability of fiber lasers has been critical in the development of these laser-based approaches. Similarly, multi-kilowatt IPG fiber lasers are required for the development of systems and processes with quicker powder build-up or powder deposition rates. It is commonly assumed that the adoption of greater power fiber lasers would result in lower costs and shorter lead times for big bespoke components.
Laser Cladding and Additive Manufacturing
Laser cladding heats the surface of the workpiece with a high-powered laser beam while infusing metal particles into the melting pool. The molten particles solidify and produce a solid surface layer. The technology, which combines a CNC machine and a robot, can generate thick claddings on difficult geometric surfaces or for additive manufacturing. The joint junction has excellent mechanical qualities because to the strong metallurgical connection between the molten particles and the substrate. Furthermore, the process’s quick heating and cooling results in very low dilution and HAZ. Laser cladding is commonly used in heavy-duty equipment to apply wear-resistant coatings or repair damaged components. It can also be used to make and repair parts made of difficult-to-cut materials or exotic alloys. We’ve created procedures for a wide range of materials, including tool steels, stainless steels, nickel alloys, cobalt alloys, and carbides.