Alloy development by laser cladding: An overview

The ever increasing and often conflicting demands made on engineering materials for suitable physical, chemical, and mechanical properties, have led engineers to take an increased interest in surface coating techniques for material protection. Laser cladding has shown that high quality, distortion free, clad, or alloyed layers can be deposited successfully on base materials. The blown powder laser cladding technique has been established and is used to produce analogs of bulk high alloy materials as hardfacing wear resistant coatings on plane carbon steel substrates. This article shows that a small selection of cladding materials is used in a wide range of cladding applications. An overview is given on how the cladding process is used to generate alloys quickly from powder mixtures of metals and ceramics. Consideration is then given to the variable composition laser cladding technique. (C) 2001 Laser Institute of America.