Abstract
Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) is an additive
manufacturing technique, which can be used to produce solid
components from a Computer Aided Design (CAD) model. The
LMD process makes use of feeding powder, which is supported
by the shielding gas, into the melt pool that is produced by
sharply focused collimated laser beam on the substrate. This
study employs aluminium powder in its molten state on
titanium substrate through the LMD process. The aluminium
powder was deposited at varying laser scanning speeds while
the laser power and gas flow rate were kept constant. The
presence of alpha phase grains were observed in the
microstructures of samples at a lower scanning speed and the
beta phase grains at a higher laser scanning speed. It was
found that the geometrical properties of the deposits, that is;
the width, height and the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) of each
sample decreased as the scan speed increases resulting from
the laser-material interaction. The microhardness and the
corrosion rates of each sample increased as the laser scanning
speed increases.