Extreme High-speed Laser Application and its First Investigations for Aerospace Applications

Extreme High-speed Laser Application (EHLA) is an evolution of laser cladding and gives a 100 fold increase in process speed from nominally 1m/min to 100m/min. Primarily developed to produce protective coatings, the technology may also have a future as a directed energy deposition (DED) technology in the fields of additive manufacture and repair.

EHLA delivers metallic powder from a nozzle, focused towards a substrate. Powder is melted in-flight via a laser, forming a thin coating and ultra-shallow melt pool. The metallurgical bond between the coating and substrate has minimal dilution and the process imparts minimal thermally induced distortion to the substrate.

In this work, the low dilution and reduced heat input associated with EHLA have been exploited to explore the difficult challenge associated with joining of dissimilar materials such as nickel superalloy to titanium.