Laser Beam Shaping in Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing

Laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF) is one of the most promising industrial metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques.

In this process, the creation of an object occurs by laser melting of selective areas of thin layers of metallic powders (the powder bed).

As metallic powders possess intrinsic low absorptivity of the laser light, limited laser-material coupling is observed in practice resulting in significant debits in productivity and materials availability for LPBF. This project will tackle this challenge by investigating new energy distribution with the help of Laser Beam Shaping.

The use of a Laser Beam Shaping leads to specific irradiance distribution and phase which could improve the productivity of the process as well as the thermal history of the parts by reducing thermal gradients, thus decreasing the residual thermal stress, or the grain orientation and size.