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