Additive manufacturing by laser cladding

LMD is an additive manufacturing technology for producing metallic components. Starting point is an alloy powder which is fed directly into the laser process. This makes it possible to mix different alloys in any ratio, which is an essential advantage of this technology.Therefore, the material properties can be designed gradually, and the fabrication of composites (e.g. sandwich structures) is feasible. Another advantage of LMD is that the substrate geometry can be quite arbitrary.  

MATERIALS has two different systems for additive manufacturing by L-DED technology: A combined laser and milling station, which allows for the sometimes necessary post-process machining in one manufacturing chain, as well as a robot station allowing the manufacturing of very large and heavy parts.

With Siemens NX, a powerful software tool is available for path planning. Not only is this software capable of simulating different cladding parameters, also the complete machining station is virtually included thus allowing for a complete simulation in advance. This is especially important when using a robot station, not only for the preemptive avoidance of possible collisions, but also for production optimization by the use of appropriate axis configurations.