Laser cladding is used in the repair of high value industrial components such as rollers, axles and turbine blades. The absence of defects is essential to the remanufacturing process. Consequently, a non-intrusive cladding monitor that is robust in detecting defects and minimizes false positives is very desirable. We report in this work a method for the monitoring of laser cladding. It is an adaptation of a commercially available weld monitoring technique that has been successfully implemented for the laser welding of automotive components. The principal is based on the sensing of the infrared energy emitted during the cladding process.

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