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Description
Inconel 625 is a solid-solution strengthened alloy of great interest for the aerospace and oil and gas industries, due to its good mechanical and corrosion properties, besides microstructure stability up to 540 °C, providing a great potential for the additive manufacturing segment. In this study, Sandvik Osprey Inconel 625 powder, atomized via vacuum induction melting inert gas atomization (VIGA), was printed via laser powder bed fusion process (L-PBF) and specimens were evaluated in terms of microstructure and mechanical performances. The VIGA process allows the production of powders with high circularity and limited satelliting, which positively contributed to achieve highly dense printed specimens. Solution annealing was done at different conditions in order to evaluate the best performances: 1048 °C followed by air cooling or water quenching, and a lower annealing temperature, 1000 °C followed by air cooling aimed to minimize grain growth. Microstructural analysis was carried out for all variants, including as-built condition in order to observe potential cellular structure, segregations and the microstructure evolution for the different annealing routes. Mechanical testing, including tensile, impact and hardness measurements were performed at room temperature for all the considered variants. High temperature tensile testing at 540 °C was done after annealing at 1048 °C and air cooling to evaluate the potential for the Sandvik Osprey VIGA Inconel 625 powder to be used at these temperatures.