Laser cladding

Laser cladding welds a powder or wire overlay onto the base metal with a small, controlled melt pool. The bond is metallurgical. That is the sentence that separates it from almost every gun on the thermal spray overview.

St. Louis Metallizing reaches for cladding when a seat, knife edge, or bore will see impact, wash, or a peel that would lift a splat coating. Crusher parts and boom hardware on heavy machinery fail that way. Some power-plant valve seats do too. A clip from the cell sits in the video gallery so a planner can see powder feed and travel without standing in the light.

Heat input is the adult in the room. Too much, and the shaft bows; too little, and you have a pretty bead with no fusion. Fixtures, preheat when the procedure says so, and grind stock planned in millimeters rather than “a heavy pass” keep the part on the print after CNC grind. Dilution is measured, not hoped. Alloys run from stainless rebuilds to tool steels and selected carbides in a matrix — the traveler names the lot because quality will ask.

Cladding does not replace HVOF on a long, thin wear land that only needs density and a diamond finish. It does not replace plasma on a ceramic barrier. People who want “the strongest coating” without a wear mode get a phone call, not a magic powder. If the old overlay must come off first, waterjet stripping saves the fillet from a wheel.

Inspection after cladding can include visual, dye, and on some lots fluorescent penetrant. Interior beads get a bore scope when the weld is in a place no inspector’s neck should go. That habit is the same one described on Our Company. From the home page this looks like another process; on the floor it is a welding cell with a spray shop’s grind bay next door. Send section thickness and the failure photo if you already know the edge is washing out.

Before the laser is scheduled

Section thickness at the wash zone decides whether cladding is even legal. A thin lip that needs toughness may still belong to a different process, or to scrap. Tell us if the part was previously welded by a field crew; leftover hard spots change the pool. Preheat and interpass numbers come from the procedure, not from a warm feeling in the booth. After the bead, plan grind stock in millimeters you can defend. If you only have a video still in mind, the gallery clip is a cousin, not a specification. Remaining wall beats a pretty spark every time.