Feasibility of laser microcladding to produce hard coatings Available to Purchase

In the last decades, the laser cladding technique has been firmly established as a technology to produce a wide range of coatings with different purposes: improve the mechanical properties or provide functional properties such as biocompatibility or corrosion protection. In order to achieve these goals, several configurations and equipments have been employed, usually to increase the velocity of the process and the profitability in relation to the competitor technologies. As a general rule, the heat affected zone and the distortion of the substrate are not considered; however some applications exist where these parameters are critical because of the laser interaction zone is close to sensitive elements or the geometrical requirements are demanded. In order to provide an adequate response to this challenge, a new experimental configuration has to be developed based on a highly stable high power laser, with high beam quality and powder stream carrying submicron particles. This work collects our efforts to make this new concept real extending the operation range of the laser cladding in order to produce microcoatings. The feasibility of this new technique has been tested with a systematic study of different precursor materials to create a hard coating whose geometrical and mechanical properties have been evaluated.