Rapid tooling using laser powered direct metallic manufacturing process

Rapid tooling (RT) has recently become more important due to the requirement of rapid manufacturing in industrial automation field. RT can be used to produce temporary mold even permanent mold in mass production and to speed up compressed time into market. It makes more benefit from design stage to mass production. This study aims to develop the rapid tooling using laser powered direct metallic manufacturing process and identify process parameters of laser cladding. A metallic powder feeder system, a three-axis motion control system, a Nd:YAG laser system, a shielding gas supply system, and dual powder nozzle are integrated into the hardware architecture of laser powered direct metallic rapid tooling system. We attempt to find out the better process parameters of laser cladding by the Taguchi's method. This system has been successfully demonstrated and some metallic RT molds and plastic injection molded part are fabricated through this proposed method.