Investigation on the temperature dependent morphology of deposited fibers for laser based glass additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is established for the production of polymer and metal structures in many branches of industry. For glass materials, the feasibility of additive manufacturing was recently demonstrated. The Laser Glass Deposition (LGD) is one of the methods to manufacture glass components on a glass substrate with a CO2 Laser. Fused silica fibers (500 µm) are fed into the process zone that is irradiated by the defocussed laser. In this study the dependence of laser power, axis velocity and fiber feed rate as relevant process parameters on the heat input and the deposition morphology of the glass fibers were experimentally and numerically investigated.