Composition and Microstructure of Laser Cladding of 316 Stainless Steel

摘要

Laser Metal Deposition Shaping (LMDS) is a Rapid Manufacturing (RM) process that can be classified under the area of layered manufacturing techniques, where parts are built in layers. Parts of any complexity can be built directly from the 3D CAD model without much human intervention and requires minimum post-processing. In fact, LMDS technique can be recognized as multilayer laser cladding. Accordingly, it is necessary to perform the elementary laser cladding experiments with common metal powder so as to better understand the LMDS process. Then the characteristics of microstructure, composition and phase of as-deposited clads were analyzed through SEM and XRD, as well as relative model. The results prove that the microstructure of 316 stainless steel deposits is composed of the slender dendrites growing epitaxially from the substrate, and the composition is uniform without obvious segregation. Besides, it can be deduced from XRD diagram that the microstructure is composed of mono-phase y.