A novel high-efficiency methodology for metal additive manufacturing

Abstract

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) offers unrivalled design freedom with the ability to manufacture complex parts. However, the high capital costs and slow throughput printing have severely restricted its application. In this paper, a new metal AM process, referred to as the “metal fused-coating additive manufacturing (MFCAM)”, was developed for highly efficient metal parts production. This new process is the combination of metal fused-coating process and laser surface melting process. A two-dimensional numerical model was established to provide an insight into the primary thermo-physical phenomena occurring in the MFCAM process. Experiments of single-track formation were conducted using MFCAM to validate the feasibility of the proposed process. The good agreement between experimental and simulated results demonstrated the reasonableness of the established models.