Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWSCyclone powder nozzle for lateral powder feed
The cyclone powder nozzles (Off-Axis) are simple, light and robust systems, which are extremely suitable for difficult-to-reach coating areas, due to their excellent accessibility. The powder feed is not independent of the direction and thus the coatings are restricted to simple, straight weld beads.
In the case of cyclone nozzles the separator deposits superfluous carrier gas from the powder mix. The homogenous powder mix can be transported at a small feed rate with low exit speed. Two powders with different densities can be homogenously mixed during the coating process.
Application
The cyclone powder nozzles are very suitable for rather simple geometries. The rather low speed is very advantageous for high precision cladding processes with weld track widths smaller than 200 µm. These kinds of processing heads can be used in all those cases, in which larger coaxial nozzles do not work because of their weight or the accessibility. Repair coatings at ring grooves and jet engine disks, coatings at inner motor surfaces, valve coatings and the manufacturing of metal micro structures at jet engines are vivid examples.
Technical data
- commercial metal and hard metal powder: ±10-150 µm
- powder beam diameter: 0.9 to 2.5 mm
- powder mass flow (Stellit): 0.5 to 25 g/min
- powder efficiency : up to 95 %
- usual weld track widths: 30 µm to 4 mm
- suitable for all industrial lasers for materials processing