Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC 2020

Additive manufacturing allows the redesign of machine elements with concepts previously underexplored, due to limitations of conventional manufacturing processes. For automotive gears, these new concepts have the potential to provide performance benefits in terms of efficiency, noise and vibration. However, the surface integrity induced by additive manufacturing may be associated to challenges of fatigue resistance. The objective of the study is to analyse microstructural, surface and dimensional aspects of carburizing steel gears manufactured by Selective Laser Melting (SLM). Microstructure and hardness heterogeneities are investigated after SLM and subsequent heat treatments. It is then discussed the potential impacts of the additive manufacturing chains surface integrity on the fatigue behavior of gears.