laser cladding

3 years ago I acquired a somewhat complete laser cladding system from the local navy ship yard research lab

panasonic arm and control
panasonic rotary positioner
16 kw fiber laser with diode head and some components for wire feed build up

also included was test plate about 50 mm thick with clad build up which had been partial thickness machined

I operate shop on maximum 10 kw single phase power--generate 3 phase with freq drives

and could not energize 16 kw laser 480 3 phase

so, the good folks of Synergy Manufacturing--Detroit became new owners
---and they transformed components into functioning system

their video

3D metal printing, laser heat treating, laser additive manufacturing, laser cladding, laser welding - YouTube



I include pics--- taken today ----of test plate ---no cladding delamination thus far

It is a nice process. A few years ago I;ve built a small system for cladding copper with molybdenum. Moly is a difficult material to deposit and the large difference in melting points complicates it too. The setup worked well but in the end I made a plasma spying system (converted from commercial plasma cutter). It was much faster and less expensive. In fact plasma coating can replace laser in many applications. The pictures shows the laser clad copper and a section showing the intermixing layer.

Can't comment on the relative value of laser vs plasma but that video is awesome because the soundtrack is Gustav Holst's The Planets