Surface engineering

The surface engineering group deals with the processes hardening, remelting, alloying/dispersing, cladding and rapid prototyping processes.

Generally, the intention of these processes is the adaption of the surface to given stresses, or to increase hardness and wear resistance as well as the generation of geometric structures based on CAD data.

Being a precise and low-distorion process laser hardening is primarily used for the local hardening of components. To obtain maximum and homogeneous hardening depths, closed-loop process control is necessary. Such a control system (TemCon) has been developed at the LZH, being able to maintain the process temperatures in a +/- 5°C tolerance range.

By using selective temperature control, local remelting in the molten phase can be done without adding filler material.

Using filler material at the alloying and dispersing to alloy specific stressed materials allows to adapt the material to the respective requirements like corrosion resistance, high-temperature strength and wear resistance. Any alloying systems can be adjusted.

Precise laser cladding accompanied by a local and temporal precise energy input can be used to repair tools by replacing eroded structures. Particularly used are alloys based on nickel, cobalt and iron, that meet different requirements according to their composition.

Within rapid prototyping deal latest research projects with single- and two-stage micro sintering as well as the 3D micro cladding where the production of metallic micro structures in the qm-range will be obtained.