A Study on the Laser Spatter and the Oxidation Reactions During Selective Laser Melting of 316L Stainless Steel, Al-Si10-Mg, and Ti-6Al-4V

By M. Simonelli, C. Tuck, N. Aboulkhair, I. Maskery, Ian Ashcroft, Ricky Wildman, Richard J. M. Hague. Metallurgical and Materials Transactions. A, 2015

341 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The creation of an object by selective laser melting (SLM) occurs by melting contiguous areas of a powder bed according to a corresponding digital model. It is therefore clear that the success of this metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology relies on the comprehension of the events that take place during the melting and solidification of the powder bed. This study was designed to understand the generation of the laser spatter that is commonly observed during SLM and the potential effects that the spatter has on the processing of 316L stainless steel, Al-Si10-Mg, and Ti-6Al-4V. With the exception of Ti-6Al-4V, the characterization of the laser spatter revealed the presence of surface oxides enriched in the most volatile alloying elements of the materials. The study will discuss the implication of this finding on the material quality of the built parts.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f56da3eb5d60fbaead0c974d2a63973a323dbd93

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

In Mechanical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

3D printing of Aluminium alloys: Additive Manufacturing of Aluminium alloys using selective laser melting (2019, background): “Laser spatter Laser spatter is created in the form of small droplets of material expelled from the melt pool, oxidising in-flight [157] with the spatter then landing onto the powder-bed.”
Denudation of metal powder layers in laser powder bed fusion processes (2016, background): “However, it is noted that material spatter, particularly large droplets, can have negative effects on the material and mechanical properties of final LPBF parts [13,14].”
Viewpoint: metallurgical aspects of powder bed metal additive manufacturing (2016, background): “If the recoil pressure onto the melt pool exceeds a threshold, small droplets might eject from the melt pool [43, 44].”