A review of laser additive manufacturing of titanium and its alloys

The unique characteristic of laser which is coherency and directionality that enables it to be focused in the needed area makes it an important tool for advance manufacturing processes. Laser additive manufacturing, produces part by using the laser as the energy source to produce parts from the computer aided design (CAD) model of the part. Three most important laser additive manufacturing process for processing titanium and its alloys are presented in this chapter. They are: laser metal deposition process and selective laser sintering and selective laser melting. These processes have been proved to be feasible for manufacturing components, using any materials, to near-net shape as well as with mechanical properties almost approaching or in some cases exceeding the properties achievable in the conventionally processed materials. The process of manufacturing complex parts directly from the three dimensional (3D) CAD model of the part, by adding materials layer by layer and in one single step using additive manufacturing, brings about producing part that is lighter: due to elimination of joining of smaller parts which is the practice in the traditional manufacturing processes. This technology is still fairly new and future development is still needed for these manufacturing processes to be able to expand the area of application of the process for producing critical parts. Some of the recent research efforts in laser additive manufacturing of titanium and its alloys are reviewed in this chapter.