The influence of laser heat treatment on the geometric structure of the surface and condition of the surface layer and selected properties of Waspaloy

Abstract

Abstract. In the aviation industry the nickel-based superalloys such as Waspaloy are very often used. Conventional machining of this alloys is difficult and expensive. Therefore a Waspaloy requires the new techniques for machining like e.g. Laser Assisted Machining (LAM). New development directions of mechanical engineering are focusing on this type of hybrid machining, where materials are heated and cut in the single process. LAM enables increasing the material machinability through the increase of its temperature in cutting zone. It is assumed that additional increased temperature in the contact zone between surface of material and cutting tool causes the increase of machinability. This paper presents the results of laser heat treatment process on Waspaloy material. The influence of laser heat treatment parameters on the surface condition and selected properties of Waspaloy were analyzed. Laser heat treatment was carried out using diode laser with nominal power equaled to 3.0 kW. The laser beam power density and its scanning laser beam velocity were analyzed. In the first step the single laser tracks were prepared and analyzed. In the second step the multiple laser tracks were prepared. The special attention was directed on change in microstructure. It was found that the laser heat treatment have significant influence on microstructure. The dendritic microstructure of Waspaloy which is characterized by a lower microhardness, causes better machinability of this material.

Applying a Traditional Casting Defect Classification to Categorize Casting Defects in Metal Matrix Composites with Saturated Reinforcement

“…The proposed classification, including both ontology and taxonomy, may be interesting not only in the material [30] area, but also in the mechanical [31][32][33] and technological [34,35]…”

Laser Alloying Monel 400 with Amorphous Boron to Obtain Hard Coatings

“…It is worth noting that boriding using a laser can obtain thicker hard surface layers in a shorter time in comparison with other methods. The thickness of laser borided layers is several times higher than of diffusion borided layers, regardless of substrate material [20,22,23,24,25,26].…”

Microstructure characterisation of Inconel 718 after laser assisted turning

“…The main problem occurs in the correlation of technological parameters on various quality indicators. The improvement of the effects of LAT is related to the area of technological and geometric variable parameters occurring in the cutting process [4][5], laser heating [6][7][8][9] and geometric variables defining the relationship between the place of beam incidence and material decohesion [3,6,9]. Better machinability indicator can be achieved by using two kinematic variations of the laser-assisted machining process: by thermal softening of the heated cutting layer and by changing the microstructure of the surface layer of the workpiece [3].…”