Metal powder is the most common feedstock for metal additive manufacturing (AM), including powder bed fusion (laser beam PBF-LB, and electron beam - PBF-EB), binder jetting (BJT) and powder blown directed energy deposition (DED). However, even if the same alloys systems are used for these technologies, they have different requirements to the powder feedstock when it comes to its physical...
To increase the relevance of LPBF in industrial manufacturing, it is necessary to increase the productivity of the process. This can be achieved on existing machine systems without changing the hardware by locally adapting the energy input in the LPBF process by using qualitative (and slow) parameters only in areas where the geometry or the application also requires it - while manufacturing...
Users of metal powder based additive manufacturing systems are often afraid of not receiving the right quality. And looking at the bulk of metal powder which shall be put in the machines it is definitely understandable that uncertainties exists:
There are many factors affecting the powder quality and moreover which of them has an influence on the printing result? For many it feels like...
The micro- and nanostructure of additively manufactured alloys designed for certain applications are influenced by atomic-level effects arising from either added or randomly inserted impurities.
While the addition of elements in very low concentrations is required for the tuning towards a specific microstructure, different production routes of the feedstock and the printed parts as well as...
One of the main advantages of Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes such as Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) is the possibility to manufacture complex near-net-shape components. Therefore, the L-PBF process is becoming increasingly important for the manufacturing and repair of gas turbine blades. Despite the great freedom in design, there are also limitations to the process. Manufacturing...
The market for laser-powderbed fusion(L-PBF) machines is growing fast and will change the future of manufacturing. Industries such as aerospace, automotive and life sciences are early adopters. However, the widespread uptake falls short of forecasted expectations, due to the lack of stability hindering the printing process, which, to date, is an unsolved key challenge.
Produced metal parts...
Additive Manufacturing (AM) has an increasing impact on modern fabrication processes. Especially in terms of tools, gauges and other consumables like grippers and fixtures, AM proofs to decrease costs and speeds up development processes. In addition to metal AM processes 3D-sand-printing (3DSP) may fill the gap towards larger parts with several tons of weight for example tooling frames for...
Additive Manufacturing (AM) provides new constructive possibilities for design engineers. Many structures with features like cavities or thin beams are difficult to manufacture using conventional methods such as casting or machining while AM can ease this difficulty. However, the design of the mechanical properties of individual lattice structures is still an obstacle for their commercial...
Most of the research on the numerical simulations of Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes have focused on the detailed Finite Element (FE) simulations to optimise these manufacturing processes and to calibrate their process parameters. Although, many details of the dynamic and transient multi-physical processes, like AM processes, are required to be simulated to obtain accurate results, the...
In recent years, additive manufacturing has become increasingly relevant for producing magnetic materials due to higher demands for miniaturisation and complex-shaped magnet parts. With laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), magnet parts of the Fe-Cr-Co system can be produced with notable shape accuracy. The chemical composition can be modified directly in the printing chamber with the in-situ...
Thermophysical property data such as surface tension, density and viscosity of liquid metals and alloys are key input-parameters for various simulations in fundamental as well as in industry related research. The field of additive manufacturing (AM) became a technological trendsetter in the last years and consequently, the interest in thermophysical property data gained more and more momentum...
The speech will also focus on the production of Metal Powders and Powder Metallurgical Steels and especially its associated production technologies like HIP, MIM and AM. As they are and will become key future core technologies for a number of demanding products and thus for the usage in different associated industries. The presentation will also highlight the actual supply and demand situation...
Components made from wire can be found in almost all complex products. In the wire drawing process, hot rolled wire is drawn through a single or a series of tools, which reduces the cross-section of the wire and enhances the mechanical properties of the material. The tribological conditions in the process are extreme and the high frictional forces between the wire and the die results in high...
Many industries desire to replace conventionally manufactured stainless steel (SS) with additively manufactured (AM) SS due to multiple advantages connected to AM. However, questions about the influence of the unique AM microstructures on corrosion resistance and the applicability of standard corrosion tests remain largely unanswered. Furthermore, the influence of post-processing steps on...
One of the main challenges for metal Laser Powder Bed Fusion process to achieve widespread industrialization is the lacking of confidence and maturity level in terms of process robustness, standard procedures and expected performance. All the aforementioned conditions coupled with low productivity rates and limited amount of alloys that can live up to those expectation, limit the growth in...
Current Qualification and Certification methods of Additive Manufactured aviation products are based on Point Design (or Qualification) approaches. Multiple destructive testing routines are performed per part number to qualify the manufacturing process.
Considering the large sources of variability affecting part quality in Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes, and the rapid innovations of...
Latest development in multi-material design realised by metal additive layer manufacturing technologies include the integration of sensors & conductors.
Specifically electrical conductors out of metal (e.g. copper) have to be insulated from the metal solid to avoid short circuiting and provide the designed functionality over the lifetime.
The presented investigations involve several...
Lithography-based metal additive manufacturing (LMM) is a novel additive manufacturing technology, which enables the production of functional metal components with smooth surface aesthetics, high feature resolutions and complex shapes, unmatched by other metal additive manufacturing technologies. The LMM printer fabricates so-called green parts applying the principle of photopolymerization...
A significant factor slowing down the establishment of metal-based additive manufacturing techniques as production processes is insufficient reproducibility and productivity. Among all additive manufacturing processes, the highest maturity level is shown by laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M). Nevertheless, the process is characterized by several phase changes and a highly...
Abstract: Additive Manufacturing challenges in Fine Blanking in Faurecia Seating
Lead time and cost reductions are key objectives in the Automotive Industry ,and it is particularly important for tooling spare parts .Reducing inventories gives a balance between stocks versus avoid mis-deliveries to final customers; reduce volume of stored spares can occur a positive financial ratio...
Laser deposition processes such as laser metal deposition or direct energy deposition are additive manufacturing techniques that offer a great flexibility and efficiency compared to traditional subtractive manufacturing processes. However, the extreme thermal conditions during deposition and the rapid cooling times pose great challenges in the alloy design. This work illustrates how to...
This work is a feasibility study for the usage of hybrid cast and WAAM manufactured components from a material science perspective. An A356 aluminium alloy in T6 condition was taken as cast substrate and a, regarding the chemical composition, identical AlSi7Mg wire was used to add structures. The welding was accomplished using a Fronius TPSi400 operating in CMT mode. Fundamental trends for the...
By volume, most of the aluminum alloys used in additive manufacturing are either Al-Si based compositions or Airbus’s Scalmalloy. However, Al-Si alloys perform poorly and Scalmalloy is expensive due to the use of Sc. Other high strength aluminum alloys families, such as those of the 7xxx series, have been barely used due to their tendency to hot crack while printing. In this framework, a high...
Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is a manufacturing process capable of additively fabricating injection mould inserts with conformal cooling channels (CCC) in various steels. This article reports the results of a case study in which an injection mould insert is produced using a newly developed hybrid-build hybrid-metal LPBF technique combined with conventional manufacturing methods. A broken...
In space applications, low density materials are required to reduce the vehicle weight and therefore increase the payload. For this reason, magnesium alloys are of interest, their low density would be beneficial to substitute aluminium in many aerospace structure applications, depending on the exact stiffness and load-bearing requirements. However, magnesium alloys are more challenging to...
Plasma Metal Deposition is an advanced manufacturing technique suitable for printing medium-to-large sized complex parts at high deposition rates while reducing material wastage and lead time. Aluminium alloys are one of the most commonly used metallic materials in manufacturing parts for aerospace and automotive applications due to their lightweight, excellent strength, and corrosion...
In Additive Manufacturing (AM), the method of Parametric Modeling (PM) is often used for the design development and creation of products. However, this approach is not yet widely used for the development of tools for production machines and processes. In the production of hairpin stators (an innovative technology for the copper winding of the static component of an electric motor for electric...
Conformal cooling in mold inserts was one of the first applications of metal 3D printing. The potential of optimized temperature control to reduce scrap or cycle time was recognized early on. In the meantime, however, not only the technology and the available tool steels have evolved, but also the possibilities in the field of tool design. Both the way near-contour cooling channels are...
Advances in Additive Manufacturing by powder bed fusion technologies based on EBM (Electron Beam Melting) or SLM (Selective Laser Melting) as well as other powder based additive routes such as LMD (Laser Metal Deposition) have led to an increase of demand on spherical powders [1]. However, most applications are realized through a handful of commercially available powders. Customized alloys and...
In this talk, two case examples of multi-parameter optimization is described, where parameter sets for multiple features such as surface roughness, downface integrity, mechanical performance or bulk density are optimized simultaneously using compact design of experiment. In the first case, a component with specific requirements on weldability, corrosion resistance and mechanical resistance led...
Recently NiTi based shape memory alloys (SMA) have been widely explored for the fabrication of complex parts through additive manufacturing (AM). Among the AM techniques, laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is on the top and gaining momentum in reason of recent and remarkable advances. Using pre-alloyed NiTi powder as a feedstock, it was possible to correlate the processing parameters to the...
Mechanical behavior of additive manufactured Nb-Ti and Ti-Nb-Zr alloys using plasma atomized and HDH powders
Mário Boccalini Jr., Railson B. Falcão, Marcelo F. Moreira, Fernando J. G. Landgraf, Moysés L. de Lima
Monotonic mechanical properties of beta Nb-48%Ti and martensitic Ti-13%Nb-13%Zr alloys processed through Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) with two different types of powder,...
Additive manufacturing by means of LPBF offers a wide range of possibilities across industries, especially with regard to the variety of geometric shapes of the components that can be produced. In conventional LPBF, however, the process parameters are still largely determined independently of the component geometry. This leads to deficiencies due to local overheating and a corresponding change...
Keywords: Additive Manufacturing, Laser Powder Bed Fusion, AA5024, Zirconium, Tungsten Carbide, Alloy Modification, Aviation
Aluminium alloys have a wide range of applications, specifically in the areas of aviation and aerospace. However, conventional manufacturing processes often limit the complexity of the fabricated parts. With the use of additive manufacturing techniques, near...
Metal additive manufacturing has developed and opened numerous fields of new components being used in aerospace, motorsports, automotive or light weight construction. The more challanges have been targeted, the more new powder materials were needed. Being among the lightest materials, Aluminum was always in scope for driving those projects. Especially from the moment also mechanical properties...
The manufacturing of high-speed steel (HSS) components using the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process could create an unprecedented combination of the materials' mechanical properties and the design freedom enabled by the process to unlock new applications, such as milling heads with functionally optimized cooling channels. However, the processing of HSS with the LPBF process shows high...
AVL List GmbH (AVL) is the world’s largest independent company for development, simulation and testing in the automotive industry, and in other sectors. As a global technology leader, AVL provides concepts, solutions and methodologies in the fields of e-mobility, ADAS and autonomous driving, vehicle integration, digitalization, virtualization, Big Data, and much more.
Since the foundation of...
Ti6Al4V the most widely used Alpha-Beta Ti-alloy for application in medicine, automotive and aerospace, known for its high strength and corrosion resistance, but also its high maximal operating temperature of around 420°C. Combined with its decent weldability under shield atmosphere it became a standard alloy for additive manufacturing processes, especially laser and electron beam based powder...
As the oil and gas companies seek to find sources of production in low-risk areas they are moving further offshore and deeper underwater. This has driven the demand for more corrosion-resistant materials, which are stronger and lighter than existing materials. Many of these materials, such as duplex and super duplex steels, martensitic stainless steels etc. are now widely used in conventional...
Maraging steels are a well-established material system for Additive Manufacturing (AM), especially for laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF), due to the high hardness & toughness produced by a martensitic aging heat treatment, which does not require carbon. Maraging steels have been successfully applied to L-PBF for conformal cooled tooling and tyre mould production. However, standard maraging...
316L austenitic stainless steel is a commonly used alloy in a wide range of applications, including energy, petroleum, automotive, and medical industry. 316L has been a choice for combustion section components in steam and gas turbine engines. Owing to its low carbon content and extremely ductile austenitic matrix, 316L is one of the most commercially exploited steels for the laser powder bed...
In recent years, there has been much activity to develop a test to measure the quality of thin layers produced from metal powders, otherwise known as the property of spreadability. Several strategies have been published but no single test has yet been adopted by the powder metallurgy community. This study presents the development and testing of one such measurement technique that is simple,...
Additive manufacturing (AM) has developed very dynamically in recent years and is becoming increasingly popular. For AM in metal, laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is the most commonly used process and has been successfully applied in many industrial applications. It allows the fabrication of complex structures, but is time consuming, expensive and limited in build volume. To date, no AM...
In this work, the influence of the as-built microstructure of a Hastelloy X with modified chemistry, processed by power bed fusion-laser beam (PBF-LB), on the stress-rupture properties (816°C, 103 MPa) is studied. Further, the significant effect and underlying mechanisms of the minor and ppm alloying additions on the improvement of the high temperature creep strength of the material is...
Nowadays, Copper alloys are widely used in additive manufacturing applications. Generally spoken, a higher thermal and electrical conductivity goes hand in and with a lower yield strength. Hence, a lot of efforts are being undertaken to improve mechanical properties of copper alloys, e.g. by improving dispersion strengthening or aging mechanisms, by chosing the right heat treatment and of...
Abstract
Selective Laser Melting (SLM) has already been used to manufacture of complex parts with high precision. However, the high cost for surface preparation is still a limiting factor for widespread of SLM parts in different industry branches. The high surface roughness and their resulting residual porosity influence the mechanical properties, especially dynamic ones. In this...
Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is nowadays well established as an additive manufacturing (AM) technology within Aerospace and Medical industry to produce components out of high-performance materials such as Titanium, Titanium Aluminides, Ni-based Superalloys and even pure Copper.
In comparison to other AM technologies, the hot EBM process leads in general to a low level of remaining residual...
The most widely used soft magnetic alloys are still legacy silicon steels, even in demanding applications such as modern electric car motors. The widespread use of amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys with far superior soft magnetic properties is hindered by size restrictions enforced by their standard manufacturing methods. The laser powder bed fusion method can produce amorphous or...
The development of new high-performance alloys is a key factor for innovation and technological advances. However, the conventional development route by means of casting is not designed to facilitate a high-throughput alloy development, since in general only one alloy composition can be made per cast and process inherent challenges like macrosegregations occur when dealing with highly alloyed...
NiTi based shape memory alloys (SMA) gained importance in the aerospace industry due to their unique shape recovery properties. Regardless of the great demand, the fabrication of SMAs is rather complex. For instance, forging and machining are limited due to the high strength and reactivity of NiTi alloys. Recently, additive manufacturing (AM) was disrupted as a feasible solution to mitigate...
