Profil project: Direct manufacturing of aerospace components by laser cladding and laser sintering

This article presents the intermediate results of a project dedicated to the direct manufacturing of aerospace parts by laser cladding or laser sintering : PROFIL. It is a french national project initiated by a large group of industrial partners in the aerospace field, two research centers and one SME. The goal of this project is dual : manufacturing aerospace parts in TA6V or Inconel 718, for civil or military applications, by laser cladding or laser sintering. Moreover, it is expected to produce parts with good mechanical properties, dimensional quality and surface roughness. The article presents the results obtained by the two techniques during the first two years of the project. The results can be decomposed into different topics : the machines and their components, the powder distribution and nozzles (for laser cladding), the process control, the parameter search, the metallurgical analysis, and finally, the simulation process (laser cladding only).