Laser microfabrication with metallic powder

Rapid prototyping (RP) technology has developed fast in the last year. It is an inevitable trend to adopt laser melting metal powder material directly to make metal parts from RP technology to rapid manufacturing. However, at present it is still at the stage of explorlation to utilize micro powder metal material for microfabrication. In this article two methods of microfabrication were investigated. One is selective laser microsintering. Equipment of YAG doubling frequency laser was used to sinter metallis powder materials to fabricate the micro part. Another is microladding fabrication. With special designation of a powder feeder the fused deposition of metallic powder was conducted. The impact factors such as laser parameters, processing parameters on microfabrication, were analyzed. Through optimization in the parameters, a micrometal part has been successfully fabricated.