Processing parameters study of closed-loop laser solid forming

To improve the accuracy and response time of closed-loop control of laser solid forming (LSF) process, it is important to master the effects of processing parameters on the deposition dimensions and mechanical parameters. In this paper, the influences of processing parameters, such as laser power, traverse speed, laser spot diameter, powder feeding rate, shielding gas flow rate on the deposition dimension parameters were investigated. It is found that the deposition height is mainly affected by the mass input of molten pool, namely, powder feeding rate and traverse velocity, especially the powder feeding rate. And the deposition width is mainly affected by the energy input such as, spot diameter, traverse speed and the energy density, among which the spot diameter and traverse speed are of greater influence. A series of transfer functions were built to quantitatively correlate the dependence of deposition layer dimension parameters on the processing parameters. The transfer function model shows a good agreement with the experimental results.