Inventing the Future of Additive Manufacturing

During the LPBF process, also known as metallic 3D printing, a LPBF system builds up a component layer by layer: Laser radiation melts powder selectively according to the geometry information of the respective component layers. After each layer, the substrate plate is lowered by one layer thickness. In a next step, a new powder layer is applied and another layer is melted.

Laser Material Deposition is a laser based cladding process. A laser beam locally melts the surface of a component, metallic material is guided into the melt pool the the material is completely melted reuslting in a metallurigical bonded layers. Repeating this procedure, multiple layers can be applied and complex geometries can be manufactured in a near-net-shape manner.

EHLA is a laser based cladding process. Unlike conventional Laser Material Deposition, the laser melts metal powder particles while they are above the melt pool. Hence, liquid material drops into the melt pool instead of solid powder particles. The process achieves a high process speed (up to 500 m/min), a layer thickness from 20 to 350 μm, dense and metallurgical bonded layers and a high material efficiency (up to 95%). Utilizing EHLA, almost any alloy can be used for coatings (e.g. iron-, nickel-, aluminum-based alloys, Metal Matrix Composites (MMC)).