• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.150-156
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• 2003

Direct Metal Deposition (DMD) is a new additive process producing three-dimensional metal components or tools directly from CAD data, which aims to take mold making and metalworking in an entirely new direction. It is the blending of five common technologies: lasers, CAD, CAM, sensors and materials. In the resulting process, alternatively called laser cladding, an industrial laser is used to locally heat a spot on a tool-steel work piece or platform, forming a molten pool of metal. A small stream of powdered tool-steel metal is then injected into the metal pool to increase the size of the molten pool. By moving the laser beam back and forth, under CNC control, and tracing out a pattern determined by a computerized CAD design, the solid metal part is eventually built line-by-line, one layer at a time. DMD produces improved material properties in less time and at a lower cost than is possible with traditional fabrication technologies.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1680-1690
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• 2006

As a promising and novel manufacturing technology, laser aided direct metal deposition (DMD) process produces near-net-shape functional metal parts directly from 3-D CAD models by repeating laser cladding layer by layer. The key of the build-up mechanism is the effective control of powder delivery and laser power to be irradiated into the melt-pool. A feedback control system using two sets of optical height sensors is designed for monitoring the melt-pool and real-time control of deposition dimension. With the feedback height control system, the dimensions of part can be controlled within designed tolerance maintaining real time control of each layer thickness. Clad nugget shapes reveal that the feedback control can affect the nugget size and morphology of microstructure. The pore/void level can be controlled by utilizing pulsed-mode laser and proper design of deposition tool-path. With the present configuration of the control system, it is believed that more innovation of the DMD process is possible to the deposition of layers in 3-D slice.