Laser cladding of transparent fused silica glass using sub-µm powder

Abstract

Fused silica glass is a commonly used high-performance material. However, due to the high temperature necessary for its production, manufacturing can also be challenging and costly. An attractive approach is additive manufacturing through laser cladding. Laser cladding of transparent fused silica was achieved using a CO 2 -laser to locally melt the substrate while injecting a stream of fumed silica glass powder into the melt-pool. By the described technique, it is possible to manufacture fully sintered silica glass with deposition rate up to 29 mm 3 /min. In this work we have studied deposition dynamics and influence of different process parameters on the final deposition quality.