Fiber lasers are suitable to be heat sources for two types of metal additive manufacturing technologies: powder bed fusion and directed energy deposition. In terms of laser powder bed fusion, the mainstream laser selective melting equipment at home and abroad is Ytterbium-doped continuous fiber lasers with power between 70 W ~1kW. Due to the limitation of the size and fabricating speed of the galvanometer, the single fiber laser can fabricate a region within 400mm×400mm, and the large-format equipment requires 2~4 sets of lasers and galvanometer modules. In terms of the laser directed energy deposition systems, the mainstream additive manufacturing equipment at home and abroad is Ytterbium-doped continuous fiber lasers, with power between 200W~10kW usually. Laser selective fusion and laser directed energy deposition additive manufacturing technologies are very suitable for forming 316L stainless steel martensitic stainless steel, Ti6Al4V, Ni718 high-temperature alloy, AlSi10Mg, CoCr alloy and other materials. The density and mechanical properties of the fabricating parts are higher than the traditional casting parts and are close to the level of forging parts.

Scholars at home and abroad have carried out sufficient laser additive forming for typical homogeneous metal materials, but researches on the integrated laser additive manufacturing technology of digital materials and digital structures are still few. At present, the research of laser additive manufacturing technologies at home and abroad is still mainly based on experimental testing. Numerical simulating based on the principle of laser-material interaction, combined with online monitoring technology of the fabricating process, and thus building a digital twin of the laser additive manufacturing process is the future development direction of the laser additive manufacturing technology. Laser DED additive manufacturing technology has the characteristics of high fabricating efficiency, but the fabricating precision is not high. Laser additive and subtractive composite manufacturing technology (such as laser powder feeding and milling adding and subtracting materials) provides a new solution to this problem. The use of ytterbium-doped fiber lasers barely fabricated pure copper and other high-reflectivity materials provides an opportunity for fiber laser research and development at visible light bands (such as blue and green light). To further develop fiber lasers, reducing the cost of fiber lasers, and controlling the overall cost of metal additive manufacturing equipment, are inevitable requirements to promote the industrialization of metal additive materials.