Automated laser fabrication of cemented carbide components

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Automated Laser Fabrication (ALFa) is one of the most rapidly growing rapid-manufacturing technologies. It is similar to laser cladding at process level with different end applications. In general, laser cladding technique is used to deposit materials on the substrate either to improve the surface properties or to refurbish the worn-out parts, while ALFa is capable of near net shaping the components by layer-by-layer deposition of the material directly from CAD model. This manufacturing method is very attractive for low volume manufacturing of hard materials, as near net shaping minimizes machining of hard material and subsequently brings significant savings in time and costly material. To date, many researchers have used this technology to fabricate components using various alloy steels, nickel-based alloys and cobalt-based alloys. In the present study, the work is extended to tungsten carbide cobalt (WC–Co) composites. A set of comprehensive experiments was carried out to study the effect of processing parameters during multi-layer fabrication. The process parameters were optimized for the component-level fabrication. Fabricated components were subjected to dye-penetrant testing, three-point flexural testing, hardness measurement, optical and scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis. The test results revealed that the laser-fabricated material was defect free and more ductile in nature. Thus, ALFa technology, not only produced the quality components, but also minimized machining of hard material and brought significant saving of time and costly WC–Co material.