Systematic evaluation of process parameter maps for laser cladding and directed energy deposition

Laser cladding and additive manufacturing based on the laser cladding process are becoming extremely important in industrial applications. This causes the necessity for process parameter maps that make the process as effective as possible. This paper offers guidelines to evaluate process parameter maps for single tracks, which are a requirement for high quality claddings and 3D structures. The procedure is executed creating a process map for the parameters laser power, powder feed rate and scanning speed for a commercial Lasertec 65 3D hybrid machine. Commercially available Inconel 718 powder is used as a basis for this study. Besides using semi-empiric correlations from literature between combined parameters and resulting tracks, further quality measures like the build rate and an arbitrary geometry factor are taken into account. Furthermore, a general guideline to determine further correlations is presented. A comparison to literature shows that some correlations appear to be widely applicable on different machines and materials.