Almost all of the research on cracks in laser cladding is based, at present, on a horizontal substrate, which cannot be directly applied to prepare high performance coatings, especially high hardness coatings, on tilted substrate. In this work, the influence of the substrate’s tilt angle on the crack behavior of high hardness Ni60A coating is studied, based on the laser intensity distribution and energy attenuation models on the tilted substrate. Results show that the cracking rate (the crack number in the unit’s cladding length) of the coating increases with the increasing substrate tilt angle, but the tilt angle has no significant influence on the crack mechanism. The different lap direction has a certain influence on the crack, and the coating prepared by downward lap cladding has a larger cracking rate due to the greater laser energy loss. Furthermore, with the increasing substrate tilt angle, the residual stress increases due to the decreased plastic flow, and the fracture strength decreases due to the decreased dilution rate, which results in the increase in the cracking rate of the Ni60A coating. This work will broaden the application of laser cladding technology on repairing complex parts such as gear and blades.

Nylon reinforced with short carbon fibres exhibits superior mechanical properties. Its use as a feedstock for fused deposition modelling (FDM) can extend its applications to consumer goods and industrial products. To investigate the flexural and impact properties of the FDM-printed short carbon fibre-reinforced nylon, a central composite face-centred (CCF) design with four factors and three levels and the response surface method (RSM) were employed. The four primary process parameters are the extrusion and bed temperatures, printing speed, and layer thickness. The three investigated responses were the flexural strength, flexural modulus, and impact strength. Perturbation curves and contour plots were used to analyse the influences of the individual and two-way interactions of the response parameters, respectively. Second-order statistical models were constructed to predict and optimise the mechanical properties. The optimal comprehensive mechanical properties were determined using a desirability function combined with the entropy weighting method. The predicted results of best comprehensive mechanical properties are 169.881 MPa for the flexural strength, 9249.11 MPa for the flexural modulus, and 29.659 kJ∙m⁻² for the impact strength, achieved under the parameter combination of extrusion temperature of 318 °C, bed temperature of 90 °C, printing speed of 30 mm∙s⁻¹, and layer thickness of 0.1 mm. A small deviation between the predicted and experimental results indicated the high reliability of the proposed method. The optimal outcomes under the studied parameters showed higher robustness and integrity than previously reported results.

The fatigue strength, as the essential basis of residual life evaluation, is required to be obtained timely for remanufacturing. Since impeller damage is characterized with very‐high‐cycle fatigue (VHCF), it is difficult to directly test the strength data. The transformation method of multisource strength data is proposed to predict fatigue strength for impeller based on grey relational theory. The multisource strength data, as factor space, primarily include available existing experimental data and operating data, while the strength data of the remanufacturing impeller are taken as target data. The fatigue strength model of material and component are presented to analyze the influence factors of remanufacturing target strength. And similar material provides a theoretical basis for selecting reference data reasonably. Considering the correlation and difference between available data and target data, the grey relational function is established, and the correction function of the target residual is brought forward to reduce the transformation deviation. The entropy‐weight theory is implemented to determine the different impacts of multisource data on target strength. A test case, predicting the unknown impeller fatigue strength with various impellers, is applied to validate the proposed transformation method, and the results show that the predicted strength data are consistent with the experimental data well.