Directed Energy Deposition with lasers using wire shows the potential of a good balance between accuracy and high deposition rates. To avoid defects and produce waste parts, inline monitoring is necessary to detect and counteract as part of inline quality control. In laser-wire processing, a risk of instability and fluctuations in wire incorporation can occur. In this work, the relation between melt pool dimensions and geometrical wire fluctuations was analysed using coaxial camera recordings. A melt pool width decrease of around 20% over less than one second indicated a subsequent movement of the wire from the center of the melt pool to the side, which is likely being caused by solid wire parts moving against solid material below the melt pool. As a consequence, a sudden wire movement lead to an increased laser energy input to the melt pool that increased the melt pool size and stabilized the process again.

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB/M) is a key additive manufacturing process for producing high-precision metal parts. However, its adoption is often constrained by production costs and the need to maximize return on investment (ROI). Increasing print speed is the most effective way to enhance profitability.

Beam shaping offers a straightforward solution by significantly boosting printing speed. When combined with a rapid switch to a small Gaussian beam for fine edge details, this approach increases production capacity by more than 50% for some specific parts, enabling ROI within months.

In this paper we will discuss the impact of differnt beam shapes across different PBF-LB/M applications, quantifying printing speed performance gains obtained on some specific parts and powders. We will at last extend this analysis to other laser-based manufacturing processes sush as DED-LB/M.

Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is a well-established additive manufacturing technique. Despite all the advantages of this process, the mechanical properties achieved are currently limited by a poor interlayer adhesion leading to low tensile strength perpendicular to the deposition direction (Z-direction). In this work, a versatile laser-assisted printing FFF system is designed for high performance and engineering thermoplastic materials printing optimization, such as PC with carbon-fiber reinforcement. The laser is used to pre-heat the material as it is being deposited by the extruder by locally melting the printed material to improve inter-layer adhesion and improve product isotropy. The temperature is monitored in situ using a thermal camera to optimize the laser preheating. The results show the improvement in the interlayer adhesion of the manufactured parts by laser-assisted FFF process, which is quantified by 50% tensile strength improvement, proving its potential for enhancing product performance for high temperature thermoplastics

Glass is frequently used in construction industry, both in facades and in interior fittings. The pane formats are limited as large glass panes would bend strongly. At TU Ilmenau a process was developed that enables the 3D-printing of glass stiffening ribs on flat glass using additive manufacturing. In a process similar to Laser Metal Deposition glass rods of 2 mm diameter are melted on their tip using a focused CO2 laser. The viscous glass is deposited on the moving glass sheets while further glass material is fed into the laser focus allowing a continuous printing process. The printing is carried out in a heated compartment which allows for printing of glass of high thermal expansion. So far, the process has been successfully implemented on model structures made of quartz glass, borosilicate glass and soda-lime-silicate glass. The printed structures are characterized by using photoelastic methods and bending tests.

Laser Glass Deposition is a promising technique for the chip-scale production of glass-based optical waveguide networks in which a fused silica (FS) optical fiber is welded onto a FS substrate using CO2 laser radiation. In this contribution, we investigate the impact of the CO2 laser radiation on the optical fiber’s waveguiding properties, particularly the propagation losses and mode characteristics. In a parameter study, we varied the CO2 laser beam parameters such as spot size, intensity profiles, wavefront curvature and optical power. Straight on-chip waveguides with a length of 100mm were fabricated and laser-cleaved for butt-coupling. Optimizing the process and beam parameters results in a fundamental mode transmission loss of less than 1.5dB at a wavelength of 1550nm, which includes coupling losses of about 1dB. These values are close to those of identical, unprocessed fibers, which exhibit losses in the range of 1dB at 1550nm in the same optical transmission experiment.

Al-Li alloys have received increasing attention for light-weight applications due to their low density accompanied by a high stiffness. However, the conventional processing of Al-Li alloys is still limited to Lithium concentrations below 9 at.%. The fabrication beyond this limit is desirable, because higher Lithium concentrations result in an increased mechanical performance.

Here we present laser-assisted additive manufacturing of binary Al-Li alloy powder with an increased Lithium content of 14 at.%. For the powder bed fusion process two different laser sources are compared: A cw laser at 1070 nm wavelength and an ultrashort pulse laser with a pulse duration of 250 fs at 1030 nm wavelength. The Lithium concentration of the additively manufactured parts is determined by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. The influence of the laser source on the microstructure and mechanical properties is investigated.