Abstract
Thermal spraying technique has been widely applied for the production of ceramic protection layer on metals that used in various hostile environments. However, all sprayed coatings have defects such as connected pores and unmelted particles, which deteriorate coating properties. To improve the properties of sprayed coatings, a lot of approaches have been undertaken such as laser irradiation, seal sintering with liquid alloys and sol-gel infiltration technique. Lasers are promising technological tools due to its speedy treatment and simplicity of process control. Moreover, laser treatment technology enables not only the post-treatment but also the pre and simultaneous treatment by combining with spraying process. Generally, wide beams of as uniform as possible are preferred for use in laser surface treatment to obtain a uniform depth of melting, alloying or cladding and to cover a large area by partially overlapping of tracks. However, it is not easy to produce a uniformly treated coating by conventional laser treatment method as desired. To obtain a near-uniform beam intensity for practical laser irradiation, a kaleidoscope was installed in a conventional YAG laser. In this research, laser beam properties of YAG laser equipped with a kaleidoscope and its effect on surface modification of plasma sprayed zirconia coatings and WC-Co system coatings prepared by HVOF spraying was investigated.
