A Foil-Based Additive Manufacturing Technology for Metal Parts

In this paper, the method, system setup, and procedure of a new additive manufacturing (AM) technology for manufacturing three-dimensional (3D) metal parts are introduced. Instead of using metal powders as in most commercial AM technologies, the new method uses metal foils as feed stock. The procedure consists of two alternating processes: foil-welding by a high-power continuous-wave (CW) laser and foil-cutting by a Q-switched ultraviolet (UV) laser. The foil-welding process involves two subprocesses: laser spot welding and laser raster-scan welding. The reason for using two lasers is to achieve simultaneously the high-speed and high-precision manufacturing. The results on laser foil-welding and foil-cutting show that complete and strong welding bonds can be achieved with determined parameters, and that clean and no-burr/distortion cut of foil can be obtained. Several 3D AISI 1010 steel parts fabricated by the proposed AM technology are presented, and the microhardness and tensile strength of the as-fabricated parts are both significantly greater than those of the original foil.