Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) is growing in importance as a technique for the processing and manufacturing of parts in industry. LMD is used for a wide range of applications including the repair of worn parts, the built-up of 3D structures and the surface functionalization trough cladding. In many cases, the nominal CAD model from the design stage is no longer suitable for the representation of the part geometry due to distortion or defects especially in case of a worn part. This means for the generation of close contoured tool paths it is essential to create a digital model representing the surface of the actual part. This digitalization is often achieved by using a laser scanner whose raw output is represented by point cloud. Tool path planning software (CAM) available on the market generally demonstrate substantial deficits in generating paths on scanned surface data, because these programs are usually optimized on NURBS based surfaces and in most cases were originally designed for subtractive manufacturing applications. LMDCAM2 represents a new software tool especially designed for the LMD process. It is optimized for working with 3D scanned, triangulated data based models which could include noisy data and offers fundamental features for creating and manipulating tool paths adapted to the LMD process. Besides algorithms for calculating close contoured equidistant tracks, the software is also able obtain tracks for additive production through advanced slicing techniques of a 3D model.
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