The characteristics of arc beam shaping in hybrid plasma and laser deposition manufacturing

As a new direct metal prototyping technology, the hybrid plasma and laser deposition manufacturing (PLDM) is proposed in this paper. In order to figure out the characteristics of plasma arc beam and mould in the PLDM process of high temperature alloy, the high speed CCD camera is used to obtain the picture around the plasma arc. Afterwards the sketch of picture is clearly obtained. And the effect of laser parameter, such as average power, pulse width, pulse repetition frequency and the angle between laser beam and plasma arc beam on the plasma arc appearance, is studied experimentally. The results show that the modality of plasma arc beam is markedly influenced by laser beam. And the improvements of shape precision and surface state of the layer deposited by PLDM are confirmed.