Studies in rapid prototyping by laser surface cladding

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Abstract
Rapid prototyping is becoming an increasingly important technique involved in the design cycles of modern industry. The majority of the rapid prototyping systems currently available use photo-reactive resins and waxes as the raw materials. The models produced by these systems often have relatively poor mechanical and physical properties and as such have a limited application to the production of advance prototypes but are excellently suited to the manufacture of engineering prototypes.This work identifies the need to produce near production grade advance prototypes from a variety of metals and a novel prototyping process based on the techniques of laser surface cladding and conventional metal machining is proposed. The integration of a carbon dioxide laser and a conventional machine tool to create the opto-mechanical apparatus required for the process is described. The generation of a variety of shapes by multi-layer cladding and some of the problems involved are also discussed. Finally a simplified techn...

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