The growing number of commercially available machines for laser deposition welding show the growing acceptance and importance of this technology for industrial applications. Their increasing usage in research and production requires process stability and user-friendly handling. A commercially available DMG MORI LT 65 3D hybrid machine used in combination with a CCD-based coaxial temperature measurement system was utilized in this work to investigate what information relating to the intensity distribution of melt pool surfaces could be appropriate to draw conclusions about process conditions. In this study it is shown how the minimal required specific energy for a stable process can be determined, and it is indicated that the evolution of a plasma plume depends on thermal energy within the base material. An estimated melt pool area—calculated by the number of pixels (NOP) with intensities larger than a fixed, predefined threshold—builds the main measure in analysing images from the process camera. The melt pool area and its temporal variance can also serve as an indicator for an increased working distance.
Laser surface structuring is becoming increasingly important in the industry for tool and mold making. While structured surfaces contribute to minimizing friction in combustion engines or to increasing efficiency of light-emitting diode-based lighting systems, surface texturing is evolving a quality feature of products with regard to optical and haptic properties. Currently used manufacturing processes for tool texturing like photochemical etching are limited in precision and in flexibility. To establish a digital process chain and to increase the design flexibility, laser ablation with (ultra) short pulse laser radiation is becoming an increasingly important technology. In the research project “eVerest,” all necessary parts of a laser texture processing are integrated into the machine and operating concept, e.g., the virtual design of the product including unrolling and visualization of the textures. Finally, new process strategies and advanced machine and system technologies are developed.
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