Rapid manufacturing of metal components by laser forming

This overview will focus on the direct fabrication of metal components by using laser-forming techniques in a layer-by-layer fashion. The main driving force of rapid prototyping (RP) or layer manufacturing techniques changed from fabrication of prototypes to rapid tooling (RT) and rapid manufacturing (RM). Nowadays, the direct fabrication of functional or structural end-use products made by layer manufacturing methods, i.e. RM, is the main trend. The present paper reports on the various research efforts deployed in the past decade or so towards the manufacture of metal components by different laser processing methods (e.g. selective laser sintering, selective laser melting and 3-D laser cladding) and different commercial machines (e.g. Sinterstation, EOSINT, TrumaForm, MCP, LUMEX 25, Lasform). The materials and applications suitable to RM of metal parts by these techniques are also discussed. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.