Combination of LPBF and welding: A practical application Manufacturing of the epee for Dominique Perrault

Abstract

One of the limiting factors of the actual LPBF machines is the size of their build chamber, their
productivity, and the process stability. The welding of LPBF parts can be used to overcome these
problems, but at the moment it is mostly shown on demonstrators and not used for real world
applications. This paper describes the manufacturing of an epee, which was used for the inauguration
ceremony of Dominique Perrault at the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. Only by a combination of
additive manufacturing with the Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process followed by a manual laser
welding process, the requirements of the design could be fulfilled.