Manufacturability analysis of extremely fine porous structures for selective laser melting process of Ti6Al4V alloy
ISSN: 1355-2546
Article publication date: 25 August 2021
Issue publication date: 2 September 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The manufacturability of extremely fine porous structures in the SLM process has rarely been investigated, leading to unpredicted manufacturing results and preventing steady medical or industrial application. The research objective is to find out the process limitation and key processing parameters for printing fine porous structures so as to give reference for design and manufacturing planning.
Design/methodology/approach
In metallic AM processes, the difficulty of geometric modeling and manufacturing of structures with pore sizes less than 350 μm exists. The manufacturability of porous structures in selective laser melting (SLM) has rarely been investigated, leading to unpredicted manufacturing results and preventing steady medical or industrial application. To solve this problem, a comprehensive experimental study was conducted to benchmark the manufacturability of the SLM process for extremely fine porous structures (less than 350 um and near a limitation of 100 um) and propose a manufacturing result evaluation method. Numerous porous structure samples were printed to help collect critical datasets for manufacturability analysis.
Findings
The results show that the SLM process can achieve an extreme fine feature with a diameter of 90 μm in stable process control, and the process parameters with their control strategies as well as the printing process planning have an important impact on the printing results. A statistical analysis reveals the implicit complex relations between the porous structure geometries and the SLM process parameter settings.
Originality/value
It is the first time to investigate the manufacturability of extremely fine porous structures of SLM. The method for manufacturability analysis and printing parameter control of fine porous structure are discussed.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the State Key Laboratory of Additive Manufacturing, China academy of engineering physics (ZM17002).
Citation
Ding, L., Tan, S., Chen, W., Jin, Y. and Zhang, Y. (2021), "Manufacturability analysis of extremely fine porous structures for selective laser melting process of Ti6Al4V alloy", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 27 No. 8, pp. 1523-1537. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-11-2020-0280
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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