Zero radius' laser forming of tungsten carbide/superabrasive cutting edges and teeth

The project will use innovative additive manufacturing to radically update the process for forming hard teeth on saw blades. The most commonly used tooth tip material is tungsten carbide. In a typical tipped blade less than 1% of the high value wear material is used. The rest is machined off during the manufacturing process or left on the base and discarded when the sharp edges are worn. State-of-the-art tungsten carbide tipped (TCT) teeth are currently formed by welding preformed tungsten carbide inserts to steel strip and then grinding these to a sharp edge. The need to manipulate individual inserts means that fine-toothed metal-cutting blades cannot currently be manufactured. The grinding process is environmentally wasteful of materials, energy and coolant.
Our new process uses micro laser metal deposition (micro-LMD) of the tip material to form the hard cutting edge, thus avoiding the need to manipulate and weld TCT inserts. In LMD, a jet of powder (eg tungsten carbide) is directed at a surface while being simultaneously melted into the surface by a focused laser beam.