Laser cladding is considered to be a highly complex process to set up and control because it involves several parameters, such as laser power, laser scanning speed, powder flow rate, powder size, etc. It has been widely studied for metal-part coating and repair due to its advantage in controllable deposited materials on a small target substrate with low heat-affected distortion. In this experiment, laser cladding of U75V and U20Mn rail steels with Inconel 625 powder was captured by an infrared camera with image analysis software to monitor the laser cladding process in order to determine the quality of the cladded substrates. The cladding temperature, thermal gradient, spot profile, and cooling rate were determined from infrared imaging of the molten pool. The results showed that cladding temperature and molten pool’s spot closely related to the laser cladding process condition. Infrared imaging provided the cooling rate from a temperature gradient which was used to correctly predict the microhardness and microstructure of the HAZ region. This approach was able to effectively detect disturbance and identify geometry and microstructure of the cladded substrate.
Understanding and predicting relationships between laser welding process parameters, such as laser power and welding speed, and molten pool have been studied widely in order to critically control and improve laser welding. The laser welding processes are difficult to monitor in real time because of high temperature and rapid heating characteristics. In this study, infrared camera was set to collect data and provide real time monitoring system to determine the molten pool characteristics and weld quality. This study carried out a laser welding of SS400 low carbon steel and analyzed real-time image of the welding process to determine the average temperature of molten pool and calculate the size of molten pool. By varying the laser power and the welding speed, the infrared camera and imaging processing technique can monitor change of molten pool temperature in a range of 1000 C to 15000 C with about 1% temperature fluctuation. In addition, the size of molten pool can be calculated from the temperature profile of the welding zone. The calculated molten pool size was about 95% accurate compared to the measured size from microscope imaging.
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