Abstract
In order to accurately measure the powder effective utilization rate and to predict the single cladding layer thickness in laser solid forming process, a new method to measure powder distribution density is presented in this paper. Using this method, the powder material entering molten pool was collected by a copper tube with the same size as laser spot and its mass was measured to accurately calculate powder effective utilization rate in the laser solid forming process. And then, the single cladding layer thickness were calculated according to the conservation law of powder material mass before and after forming, and the correctness of calculating results was verified via a series of single track experiments. The results show that the theoretical calculation results of single cladding layer thickness are well coincident with the experimental results, and it proves that the measurement method of powder distribution density is accurate and reliable. In addition, laser power has a great influence on the geometry size of single cladding layer. Therefore, the influence of laser power on the geometry size of single cladding layer should be taken into account when establishing the prediction model of single cladding layer thickness.
Highlights
Laser solid forming (LSF) is a new type of advanced manufacturing technology which can be used to rapidly fabricate the full dense complicated metallic components with high performance not using molds [1]
The results show that the theoretical calculation results of single cladding layer thickness are well coincident with the experimental results
Powder effective utilization rate and the size of laser beam are constant when the distance between the coaxial powderfeeding nozzles and the forming surface remains unchanged in the LSF process, single cladding layer thickness is mainly affected by powder feeding rate and scanning speed
Summary
Laser solid forming (LSF) is a new type of advanced manufacturing technology which can be used to rapidly fabricate the full dense complicated metallic components with high performance not using molds [1]. Due to the mass of powder materials sent out by the powder feeder per unit time is known, whether the mass of powder materials entering the molten pool can be measured accurately has become the key to explore powder effective utilization rate. In order to accurately measure the powder effective utilization rate and to predict the single cladding layer thickness in laser solid forming process, this article proposes an alternative method to measure the mass of powder materials entering the molten pool. The methodology is relatively simple and is based on the weight measurement Using this method, the powder material was collected by a copper tube with the same size as laser spot and its mass was measured to accurately calculate powder effective utilization rate. The results show that the theoretical calculation results of single cladding layer thickness are well coincident with the experimental results
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