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Recent advances in additive manufacturing (AM) have attracted significant industrial interest. Initially, AM was mainly associated with the fabrication of prototypes, but the AM advances together with the broadening range of available materials, especially for producing metallic parts, have broaden the application areas and now the technology can be used for manufacturing functional parts, too. Especially, the AM technologies enable the creation of complex and topologically optimised geometries with internal cavities that were impossible to produce with traditional manufacturing processes. However, the tight geometrical tolerances along with the strict surface integrity requirements in aerospace, biomedical and automotive industries are not achievable in most cases with standalone AM technologies. Therefore, AM parts need extensive post-processing to ensure that their surface and dimensional requirements together with their respective mechanical properties are met. In this context, it is not surprising that the integration of AM with post-processing technologies into single and multi set-up processing solutions, commonly referred to as hybrid AM, has emerged as a very attractive proposition for industry while attracting a significant R&D interest. This paper reviews the current research and technology advances associated with the hybrid AM solutions. The special focus is on hybrid AM solutions that combine the capabilities of laser-based AM for processing powders with the necessary post-process technologies for producing metal parts with required accuracy, surface integrity and material properties. Commercially available hybrid AM systems that integrate laser-based AM with post-processing technologies are also reviewed together with their key application areas. Finally, the main challenges and open issues in broadening the industrial use of hybrid AM solutions are discussed.

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Nickel-based alloys are known as non-weldable materials due to their complex characteristics. Consequently, additive manufacturing of these alloys is particularly challenging. In this paper, the influence of process parameters on the porosity, crack formation and microstructure of additively manufactured CM247LC nickel-based alloy is analysed. The feasibility of the direct laser deposition (DLD) process to manufacture crack-free and low-porosity CM247LC samples is studied. CM247LC samples were built on Inconel 718 that has similar chemical composition, to form hybrid superalloy parts. It was shown that crack-free and high-density CM247LC samples can be obtained through DLD without significant substrate preheating for certain parameter combinations: laser power in the range of 800–1000 W and powder feed rates between 6 and 8 g/min. High-cost and complex preheating was avoided that was commonly reported as necessary to achieve similar densities. For hybrid parts, a large beam diameter and slow scan speeds were employed to achieve optimal conditions as it was evident from the achieved bonding between the Inconel 718 substrate and the deposited layers. It was observed that good bonding between the two materials can be obtained with laser power values between 800 and 1000 W, scanning speed higher than 300 mm/min and powder flow rates of 6–8 g/min.