Fabrication with high-performance materials and light-weight structures by direct metal deposition

The fabrication of dense metallic parts by direct metal deposition is state of the art in various industrial fields, e. g. aviation, energy, tooling, medical technology or automotive. Parts are generated by use of a fairly large variety of different alloys (e. g. Ni-, Co-, Ti-, Fe-base materials). Due to permanently increasing requirements (e. g. enhanced system efficiencies or environmental standards) in almost all fields of applications the use of very high-performance but also crack-sensitive materials is more and more required. This includes for example TiAl as well as Ni-Base superalloys. In addition the placement of metallic materials on composite structures (e. g. carbon fiber laminates) is a very challenging but interesting material combination due to the light weight of the resulting structure. In this paper, the processing with such interesting material combinations is discussed and examples of (potential) applications are shown.