Laser metal deposition (LMD) is one of the most important laser additive manufacturing processes. It can be used to produce functional coatings, to repair damaged parts and to manufacture metal components. Ti6Al4V is one of the most commonly used titanium alloys, since it features a good balance of the mechanical properties of strength and ductility. The LMD of Ti6Al4V is attracting more and more attention from both science and engineering. The interest in processing Ti6Al4V with LMD in industry, especially in aerospace and medical branches, has been increasing in the last few years. In this paper, the state of the art for LMD of Ti6Al4V is reviewed. In the first part, the basics for Ti6Al4V, including, for example, the development history, the material properties, the applications, the crystal structure, the heat treatment and the mechanical properties, are introduced. In the second part, the main emphasis is on state of the art for LMD of Ti6Al4V. Initially, the process parameters of the current state of the art in the last years and their effects are summarized. After that, the typical microstructure after LMD is discussed. Then, the conducted heat treatment methods and the achievable mechanical properties are presented. In the end, some of the existing, current challenges are mentioned, and the possible research directions for the future are proposed.

Extreme high-speed laser material deposition (EHLA) is a variant of laser material deposition (LMD) with a modified powder gas jet focus. EHLA allows deposition at high process speeds in the range of several hundred meters per minute and the deposition of layers as thin as 25 μm. Feed rates can be in the range of 50 g/min or above. The processing of material combinations with poor weldability or different melting points is possible, with simultaneously smaller heat-affected zone and dilution zone compared to conventional LMD. Until now, EHLA has mainly been used for applying wear-resistant and corrosion-resistant coatings to rotationally symmetric parts, where high process speeds are achieved by rotation of the substrate. Developing EHLA for additive manufacturing (AM) aims at manufacturing highly individualized parts with high volume buildup rates and finer structural resolution compared to conventional LMD. The main steps toward harnessing EHLA for AM, termed EHLA 3D, are (a) process parameter development for volume buildup through deposition of multiple layers on top of each other and (b) the development of system technology that allows relative spatial movement between the powder nozzle and the substrate at high speeds and high accuracy in three dimensions. With a fast back-and-forth motion, high acceleration rates are necessary to ensure high volume buildup rates and high powder deposition efficiency. In this work, a specially designed tripod machine concept that has been developed in cooperation at Fraunhofer ILT is introduced. Theoretical considerations concerning achievable powder deposition efficiency as a function of process speed and acceleration of the handling system are presented. Furthermore, the results of process parameter development for up to 40 m/min with the iron-base alloy 1.4404 are shown. Virtually pore-free deposition of cuboid volumes is demonstrated. The mechanical values of the additively manufactured volumes are compared to the values for solution-annealed material, conventional LMD-manufactured samples, and samples produced by laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). Finally, an outlook on future research activities required for further development of EHLA 3D is given, covering system technology, buildup strategies, software integration, and possible applications of the new technology in repair, coating, and (hybrid-)additive contexts.

A variant of conventional laser material deposition (LMD), extreme high-speed laser material deposition (German acronym: EHLA) is characterized by elevated process speeds of up to 200 m/min, increased cooling rates, and a significantly reduced heat affected zone. This study focuses on the feasibility of using EHLA to apply material onto Fe-based substrate materials with AISI 4340 as a filler material. We studied how three different build-up strategies—consisting of one, three, and five consecutive deposited layers and hence, different thermal evolutions of the build-up volume—influence the metallurgical characteristics such as microstructure, porosity, hardness, and static mechanical properties. We propose a thermo-metallurgical scheme to help understand the effects of the build-up strategy and the thermal evolution on the microstructure and hardness. The tensile strength of the build-up volume was determined and is higher than the ones of forged AISI 4340 material.

Extreme high-speed laser material deposition, known by its German acronym EHLA, is a new variant of laser material deposition (LMD) with powdered additives. This variant’s process control is unlike that of LMD, where the powder melts as it contacts the melt pool. In the EHLA process, the laser beam melts the powder above the surface of the substrate to deliver a liquid to the melt pool. At a given intensity distribution in a laser beam, the heating of powder particles in the beam path depends largely on the three-dimensional powder particle density distribution (PDD) and the relative position within the laser beam caustic. As a key element of a comprehensive numerical process model for EHLA, this paper presents a statistical/numerical model of the powder-gas jet, as previously published in Experimentelle und modelltheoretische Untersuchungen zum Extremen Hochgeschwindigkeits-Laserauftragschweißen. The powder-gas jet is characterized experimentally and described with a mathematical model. This serves to map the PDD of the powder-gas flow—and particularly the particle trajectories for different grain fractions—as well as the powder mass flows and carrier and inert gas settings, to a theoretical model. The result is a numerical description of the particle trajectories that takes into account the measured particle size distribution with calculations made on the assumption of a constant particle velocity and linear trajectories of the particles.

Aluminum-magnesium-scandium-zirconium (AlMgScZr) alloys need to be rapidly cooled from the liquid state to obtain a high degree of solute supersaturation that helps to exploit the precipitation hardening potential of the material. While AlMgScZr alloys have been successfully used in laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) processes, there has been little research in the field of laser directed energy deposition (DED) of the material. The limited previous studies have shown that the performance of AlMgScZr parts fabricated with DED only reached about 60% of that of the parts fabricated with LPBF. In view of breaking through the limitation associated with the process conditions of conventional DED, this work demonstrates the DED of AlMgScZr alloys in high-speed process regimes and elucidates the mechanism of enhancing the hardness and tensile strength of AlMgScZr alloys by increasing the cooling rate by one to two orders of magnitudes, as well as reducing the track overlapping and the porosity of the specimens during the process. A maximum average hardness of nearly 150 HV0.1 and a max. tensile strength of 407 MPa are obtained by using an energy per unit length of 5400 J/m and a powder feed rate per unit length of 0.25 g/m.

Extreme high-speed directed energy deposition (EHLA) is a variant of directed energy deposition (DED-LB) developed at Fraunhofer ILT in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University. Because of a powder gas jet setup that is aimed at melting particles in the laser beam before they enter the melting pool, high process speeds of up to several hundred meters per minute and a layer thickness as thin as 25 μm can be achieved. EHLA is generally applied for rotationally symmetric coating applications. In previous experiments on a prototype machine of ponticon GmbH, EHLA was used for building up dense volumes, thus qualifying its use for additive manufacturing, now termed EHLA 3D. In this work, using iron-base alloy 1.4404 and a process speed of 40 m/min, cubic volumes are produced with EHLA 3D. Different deposition strategies commonly used in DED-LB are tested for their transferability to EHLA 3D. The results of different deposition strategies achieving the best near net shape geometry are shown in comparison to DED-LB. Furthermore, the influence of the deposition strategy and used technology on thermal management and microstructure are investigated. The best near net shape is achieved in this comparison using a contour-hatch strategy with 1.5 contours per layer and a 90° rotation of the hatch, both for EHLA and DED-LB. The microstructure of EHLA 3D built cubes is more similar to a typical laser powder bed fusion microstructure than to a typical DED-LB microstructure with respect to grain size and structure.