Area melting with multi-laser arrays to increase build rate for metal powder bed fusion additive manufacturing

Jason Karp; Victor Ostroverkhov; David Bogdan; Michael Graham; Brian McCarthy; William Carter

doi:10.1117/12.2513892

4 March 2019 Area melting with multi-laser arrays to increase build rate for metal powder bed fusion additive manufacturing

Jason Karp, Victor Ostroverkhov, David Bogdan, Michael Graham, Brian McCarthy, William Carter

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 10909, Laser 3D Manufacturing VI; 1090909 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2513892
Event: SPIE LASE, 2019, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Printing functional, metal parts for mass production using powder bed fusion additive manufacturing requires the ability to deposit more energy at the working plane to increase build rate. Conventional approaches serially add fiber lasers and scanners to create dual and quad laser machines, but scaling this strategy is limited by the size of powder bed while current scan parameters do not utilize the full output potential of available laser sources. Instead, a processing head containing an array of lower power laser sources can melt wider regions of a powder bed simultaneously to increase build rate. A 16 channel processing head comprised of fiber-coupled direct diodes capable of outputting up to 960W of combined power is presented. Fiber arrays arranged to melt widened tracks of CoCr powder demonstrated builds with >99% density at 2x the build rate of conventional, single laser systems. Details of the array layout, optical system and controls are presented along with scan strategies for melt tracks of varying widths. Most importantly, the array configuration can be scaled to multi-kW outputs spread over larger areas without requiring new parameter development as the energy per unit area remains unchanged with channel count.

Citation Download Citation

Jason Karp, Victor Ostroverkhov, David Bogdan, Michael Graham, Brian McCarthy, and William Carter "Area melting with multi-laser arrays to increase build rate for metal powder bed fusion additive manufacturing", Proc. SPIE 10909, Laser 3D Manufacturing VI, 1090909 (4 March 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2513892

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available