Investigation of laser and process parameters for Selective Laser Erosion

The process of Selective Laser Erosion (SLE) was investigated to study the effects of different process and laser parameters on the process outputs such as surface quality and erosion rate. The SLE process is a direct method to remove material in a layer-by-layer fashion due to high energy densities provided by the laser beam. In addition to its direct use as a subtractive manufacturing method, SLE may be used in combination with layer-additive techniques such as Selective Laser Melting (SLM). Such combination mainly makes sense when both processes can be performed with the same laser. However, one of the major problems involved in SLE process is the high number of the laser and process parameters (laser power, pulse frequency, scan speed, scan spacing, ambient atmosphere, etc.) and the complexity of the relations between them which has not yet been investigated completely.