In this article, we propose to investigate the capabilities of the powder bed laser melting process for the direct manufacturing of aerospace components.
First, we describe the powder bed laser melting process. The article starts with a brief presentation of the context of the study by presenting the main GERAILP projects related to the powder bed laser melting process for the producing parts in dense materials.
Then, the experiment setup is described. A demonstration machine is instrumented with a high speed camera in order to register the fusion process online. A large number of materials (steel, stainless steel, Ni and Ti based alloys,…) with different grain size distributions is proposed. The special attention is addressed to the compactness of the powder before lasing.
Then, the experiments are made with a variation of a large number of process parameters (laser power, process speed, grain size,…). By analysis of the registered videos, we evidence the main physical processes that lead to the generation of the seam and, so, better understand the main physical parameters that influence the powder bed laser melting process.