A contribution to laser cladding of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy

A wear resistant coating was successfully made on an annealed Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy by laser surface cladding using 60 wt.% WC + wt.% 40 NiCrBSi powder blends. Coaxial laser cladding was performed by means of Yb:YAG disk laser with a 3-KW continuous wave. Different laser interaction times were attempted to get the optimal conditions for promising mechanical properties. The new contribution was to accomplish larger clad layer thickness with applying the shortest possible laser interaction time that can achieve superior clad layer properties. This will decrease energy consumption with an expected money saving which is an essential factor for successful engineering solutions. A high powder flow rate of 20 g.min(-1) was intended in order to obtain a thick, nonporous and crack free clad layer. The clad samples were subjected to thorough microstructure investigations, in addition to microhardness and wear evaluation. The coating so produced exhibits multiple hardness values and exceptional wear resistance under adhesive/sliding wear conditions. The obtained results expose clad layer with superior quality that was achieved at a laser interaction time of 0.3 s. An enhancement in the microhardness values of the clad layers by more than fourfold was attained and the wear resistance was thus significantly improved.