Page 1 - Laserline-Case-Study-Repairing-damaged-coatings
P. 1

Repairing Damaged Coatings





               Task                                               The hot wire diode laser cladding process offers improved

                                                                  performance over conventional surface coating methods,
               Alabama Laser was tasked with repairing a customer’s   as it produces no wasted filler material, reduces heat
               damaged propeller shaft, which had originally been   input, and improves production repeatability and stable
               covered with a special ceramic coating designed to   production rates. The Laserline laser’s temporal stability
               protect the base material. The coating had chipped off in   and uniform beam profile played a crucial role in making
               several places, rendering the shaft useless and irreparable   this process development a success.
               in the field. The customer needed a fix that provided the
               same protection as the ceramic coating, but was longer-
               lasting and field-repairable.

               Process


               Alabama Laser repaired the coating with a Laserline
               LDF 6000-60 6 kW laser and their own proprietary hot
               wire technology. After removing the old coating and
               affixing the shaft in the cladding equipment, the laser was
               focused on the rotating part, and hot ALS024 wire was   Material: Stainless steel
               added to the melt pool.                            Task: Repair of propeller shaft
                                                                  Laser: LDF 6000-60
               Result
                                                                  Optics: f_foc = 400 mm
                                                                  Parameters: Hot wire diode laser cladding
               By using a diode laser to apply the stainless steel coating,
               Alabama Laser cut the processing time to less than three   Result: Improved surface, cost reduction
               weeks and the processing cost to a quarter of the cost of
               a typical ceramic coating. The actual cost of the new
               coating is comparable to that of other conventional
               cladding methods, and because it is stainless steel, the
               part is post-weldable, meaning it can be repaired in the
               field if need be.






               www.laserline.com
   1   2