Investigation of Additive Manufacturing Process by LMD Method, Affecting Process Parameters on Microstructure and Quality of Deposition Layers

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a general name used for production methods which have the capabilities of producing components directly from 3D computer aided design (CAD) data by adding material layer-by-layer until a final component is achieved. Included here are powder bed technologies, laminated object manufacturing and deposition technologies. These technologies are presently used for various applications in engineering industry as well as other areas of society, such as medicine, aerospace, architecture, cartography, entertainment. Laser metal deposition (LMD) using powder as an additive is an AM process which uses a multi-axis computer numerical control (CNC) machine to guide the laser beam and powder nozzle over the deposition surface. The component is built by depositing adjacent beads layer by layer until the component is completed. LMD has lately gained attention as a manufacturing method which can add features to semi-finished components or as a repair method. LMD introduce a low heat input compared to arc welding methods and is therefore well suited in applications where a low heat input is of an essence. For instance, in repair of sensitive parts where too much heating compromises the integrity of the part. It has been found that the most influential process parameters are the laser power density, scanning speed, powder feeding rate and powder standoff distance and that these parameters has a significant effect on the characteristics of the material such as microstructure.