Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF), Directed Energy Deposition (DED), and Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) are key additive manufacturing processes for producing complex parts. However, on one-side, increasing laser power to improve productivity often introduces defects such as spatters, or hot-cracking, which limit further process scalability, and on the other side the dimension of the systems limits its scalability to process more complex and smaller parts.  This presentation illustrates how beam shaping, via Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC) — a technology developed by Cailabs — can be used to address these limitations.

By adapting the laser intensity profile—such as using a ring-shaped beam for LPBF and wire-DED, ring-dot shapes for powder-DED, or employing a rectangular top-hat in AFP—energy can be more optimaly distributed, stabilizing the process. Several benefits have already been demonstrated: in LPBF, a significant increase in print speed was achieved on Ni 625 using a ring-shaped beam, with no compromise in part quality. In AFP, a rectangular top-hat beam shape enabled a 2.5× reduction in system footprint while increasing the complexity of manufactured parts. In wire-DED, a unique beam shaping methods significantly reduces the footprint of the DED-head enabling opening new applications and way to think wire-DED.  The application results for those three additive manufacturing processes and how beam-shaping was implemented and provided improvements on the process will be discussed in this paper.