Characterization and evaluation of laser cladding deposited coatings

The paper contains recent work of the authors regarding the quality of layers deposited with the laser cladding technique. In the field of additive manufacturing, directed energy deposition (DED) in laser cladding presents both opportunities and challenges, especially in adapting to complex geometries while maintaining consistent material properties. Traditional laser cladding systems operate with fixed parameters, making it hard to balance precision and deposition efficiency. Smaller laser spot sizes offer high accuracy but lower deposition rates, while larger spots enable faster cladding at the expense of fine detail. This paper investigates an approach to adjusting parameters like laser power to achieve uniform material characteristics in 316L stainless steel claddings on 304 stainless steel substrates. The deposition parameters were adapted to the type of the materials that were used. Custom parameters are necessary in order for both the substrate and the alloy deposited, including laser power, laser spot size, advance speed, and degree of overlap between deposited layers.