Laser powder bed fusion with intentionally-seeded porosity for prototyping of powder metallurgy parts

December 11, 2020

Morgan Letenneur (1), Pete Imbrogno (2), Amin Molavi-Kakhki (3), Vladimir Brailovski (1)
Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing, 4, December 2020: 119. DOI: 10.3390/jmmp4040119


Keywords

laser powder bed fusion, additive manufacturing, process parameters, pressing sintering, functional prototypes, carbon alloy


Abstract

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing technology was used to produce functional prototypes of powder metallurgy (PM) components from high carbon content, iron-based water-atomized powders. The melt pool modeling and design of experiment approaches were combined in order to determine the LPBF operation window allowing to print parts with components similar to the PM in terms of density, microstructure and mechanical properties. The size, morphology and distribution of processing-induced pores were evaluated using computed tomography, while a microstructure analysis was carried out using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, and the mechanical properties were evaluated using tensile and unnotched Charpy testing. It was demonstrated that LPBF technology could effectively be used for the just-in-time manufacture of high-fidelity functional prototypes of PM parts from iron-based powders.


How Our Software Was Used

Dragonfly was used to analyze CT data.


Author Affiliation

(1) Department of Mechanical Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, 1100 Notre-Dame Street West, Montreal, QC H3C 1K3, Canada.
(2) Keystone Powdered Metal Co., 289 Eberl Street, St. Marys, PA 15857, USA.
(3) Rio Tinto Metal Powders, 1625, route Marie-Victorin, Sorel-Tracy, QC J3R 1M6, Canada.