Current progress and applications of high-speed laser cladding machines

It is well known that the manufacturing level and technology of agricultural machinery in many regions are still relatively low. Therefore, the product safety, reliability, durability, and applicability of the agricultural machinery tools produced still have a significant gap compared to other regions. Especially in key components of agricultural machinery, such as furrow openers, harvester blades, rotary tiller blades, etc., if these key wear-resistant parts fail, it will greatly increase the maintenance cost and affect the efficiency of mechanical work, so High-speed laser cladding machine plays a crucial role. For this slow-developing traditional agriculture, the application of high-speed laser cladding technology in the agricultural field will bring revolutionary changes.

High-speed laser cladding machine is a technology that modifies the surface of the base material. It can use the laser radiation process through a preset cladding path to quickly melt the material and the surface of the substrate after laser treatment to form a molten pool, and then quickly solidify into a low-dilution, and a cladding layer with a certain thickness, which can repair in-situ agricultural machinery parts, or improve the original base material's heat resistance, corrosion resistance, wear resistance, and oxidation resistance.

Compared with traditional processing technology, high-speed laser cladding machines have more obvious advantages, such as the cladding layer and the base layer are easier to form metallurgical bonding, and the heat affected zone of the substrate is smaller, and deformation is less likely to occur. The dilution rate of the cladding layer is relatively low, so it can better save materials, and the thickness can be controlled, and it can repair certain specific parts in the components, or positions that are difficult to handle using other methods.

Before cladding and repairing the parts of agricultural machinery, the surface of the agricultural machinery parts needs to be pre-treated. Due to the harsh working environment of agricultural machinery, the surface of agricultural machinery parts often has soil, oil stains, water, fertilizers, pesticides, rust, and oxide layers, etc. Therefore, it is more complex than the repair of parts in other fields. For the parts of agricultural machinery, the general operation is to first use water to wash away the surface dirt from the soil-contacting tillage parts. If the dirt on the damaged surface is relatively firm, the mechanical sandblasting method can be used for cleaning, while for parts such as the engine and rotating shaft, the oil stains are first cleaned with a detergent. After that, the surface to be clad is polished with sandpaper and cleaned with a solvent to avoid laser cladding machine surface stains entering the cladding layer during laser cladding, causing defects, which will affect the quality and performance of the cladding layer.