Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC 2022

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 materials. The newly developed 3D Extreme High Speed Laser Material Deposition (EHLA) process shows promising features for an accelerated alloy development for metal powder-based AM processes. In this work, the applicability of the 3D-EHLA process in the context of rapid alloy development is investigated. In the first step, the parameters (e.g. scanning speed, laser power, powder mass flow) and tools (powder-gas jet, laser radiation) of the 3D-EHLA process and their effect on alloy development processes are evaluated. Subsequently, an integrated methodology is introduced, through which an efficient workflow along the whole process chain of alloy manufacturing and sample evaluation is obtained. Finally, the influence of laser power, scanning speed and powder mass flow on the evolution of the microstructure is be investigated (alloy: 316L). The most pronounced influence of these parameters is found for the scanning speed which displays a negative correlation to the cell size. A positive correlation is found between laser powder/powder mass flow and the cell size.