This article will discuss the fundamentals and distinctions of laser cladding and Laser alloying, as well as provide a quick description of the benefits over competing approaches.
What is Laser Cladding？
Laser cladding is a procedure that deposits specific coating materials onto the surface of a substrate using various filler methods.
After being irradiated by a laser, the material is melted onto the surface of the substrate in a thin layer and swiftly solidifies to produce a surface coating with little diffusion and metallurgical bonding with the substrate material.
This improves the surface’s resistance to wear, corrosion, heat, and oxidation while also improving its electrical qualities on the underlying material.
What Does Laser Alloying Mean?
Laser alloying is a metal surface method that employs a laser beam as the energy source. A coating material is put onto the base material prior to the laser alloying process. The laser beam is then directed at the coating and base materials. These two materials are fused or alloyed together by the laser beam.
Laser alloying is frequently used for objects that require greater wear resistance, such as particular regions on tools. Another application is improving a base material’s corrosion resistance. So long as the materials are suitable, using corrosion resistant materials on the surface of a sensitive base material can considerably boost its resistance to oxidation.
Principles of Laser Alloying
One benefit of laser alloying is that the amount of base material dissolved during the alloying process is minimized. Heat input can be much lower with the right laser beam characteristics than with traditional alloying, surface, or cladding processes. Because of the modest dilution, the coating material retains many of its original qualities. Laser alloying’s low heat input lowers the area of the heat affected zone (HAZ), allowing the base material to maintain many of its original qualities. Because of the smaller heat affected zone, rapid cooling periods may be obtained, resulting in coatings with high hardness and exceptional wear resistance.
Advantages of Laser Surface Alloying
- Increased wear resistance
- Increased corrosion resistance
- Base material diluted during the alloying process can be kept to a minimum
- Heat input is significantly lower than other alloying methods
- High productivity and control
- High quality alloyed layer
Differences between Laser Cladding and Laser Alloying
Laser cladding and laser alloying are both rapid melting processes produced by high-energy-density laser beams, forming alloy coatings with completely different compositions and properties on the surface of the substrate that are fused with the matrix. The processes of the two are similar, but they are essentially different. The main differences are as follows:
(1) The cladding material is totally melted during the laser cladding process, and the melted layer of the base material is extremely thin, thus it has little influence on the composition of the cladding layer. Laser alloying, on the other hand, adds alloy to the base material’s surface melting cladding layer. The goal is to produce a new alloy layer based on the base material.
(2) Laser cladding does not use the molten metal on the substrate’s surface as a solvent, but rather melts the independently designed alloy powder to form the cladding layer’s primary alloy. A tiny layer of the substrate alloy melts at the same time to generate Metallurgical bonding. The preparation of new materials using laser cladding technology is a crucial foundation for the repair and remanufacturing of defective components under harsh circumstances, as well as direct metal part manufacturing. It has gotten a lot of interest from the scientific community and businesses all around the world.