Laser Additive Manufacturing of High Added Value Pieces

Additive manufacturing is a recent technology with great future perspectives, within it Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM) has led to a revolution in the design and manufacture of parts that, until now, were virtually impossible to manufacture. However, this technology still shows limitations, many of them are related to the deformations caused by the heat input of the laser beam, the difficulty of programming the necessary paths to manufacture layer by layer the piece, and the need of a post-processing of machining in order to ensure the final dimensions of the manufactured parts. This article shows some of the difficulties encountered during the manufacturing process of a real piece and the way it is envisaged that they will be overcome with the 3D dimensional control of the part, through the developed 3D vision system.