Analysis and prediction of melt pool size in laser deposition manufacturing

During laser deposition manufacturing process, the forming width of the single track is mainly controlled by the melt pool width. However, high geometric accuracy is premised on the stable size of the melt pool. In order to establish an empirical model described relationship between the melt pool width and main process parameters (laser power, scanning speed, and powder feeding rate), turn off laser control in uneven speed stage was used and Kalman filtering was applied to denoise the measured data of the melt pool width. An empirical model between the process parameters of laser deposition and the width of molten pool was established based on orthogonal experimental design with a goodness-of-fit of 94%, and the maximum error was less than 4.5%. The results of single variable experiments conducted to the model show that the melt pool width has a positive correlation to the laser power and a negative to the scanning speed. The experimental results were in good agreement with the regression analysis.