Fabrication of Inorganic Material Models with Local Chemical Reaction Heat by Laser Scanning

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new method of fabricating 3-D models of the inorganic materials having high melting points such as ceramics and intermetallic compounds by laser scanning. To save the laser energy, we adopted the combustion synthesis which is the exothermic reaction between the raw materials. By adding chemical reaction heat to laser heat, the particles of the products of the reaction were bonded together by relatively low laser energy. The combinations of the raw materials and the laser scanning conditions for solidifying the products of the reaction and laminating the solidified layers were investigated experimentally. By mixing the powdered binder with the reactive raw materials, the simple layered models were fabricated.