Laser cladding forming of cantilevered thin-walled part based on hollow-laser beam inside powder feeding technology

Combining hollow laser beam inside powder feeding technology and 6-axis robot, a cantilevered thinwalled metal part is deposited layer by layer by means of continuously varying the attitude of laser cladding nozzle along the tangential direction of the thin wall. The modeling of force and displacement of the molten pool on an inclined surface is carried out. The shifting and flow of the molten pool are restrained by optimizing the laser cladding parameters in this model. The experimental results indicate that the forming of the cantilevered part with a changing incline angle from 0° to 81° is achieved without support. And, the surface of this part is flat and smooth, and the "step effect" is completely eliminated. The cladding layers are nearly symmetry along the central axis of the part, and the shifts of the layers influenced by gravity are not apparent. The microstructures of the part at different incline angles have no significant differences, and all achieve small grain size and compact texture.