Selective laser melting - influence of atmosphere and realization of in-situ fonction alloy
During the last decade, selective laser melting attracted attention in industry because it could allow producing parts with complex shapes rapidly and accurately. The aim of this work is to obtain parts with desired properties by SLM technology. To achieve this point, a theoretical and experimental approach was developed concerning a new process which carries out the selective laser melting process at pressures in the range 1 to 1×10-2 mbar.Vacuum operating under allows avoiding the plasma shield generated from the gas atmosphere ionized by the high laser energy, which on the one hand avoids the chemical contamination (oxidizing, nitriding…) during the melting process and on the other hand reduces the porosity rate. The effect of laser parameters and environment variables on the quality of parts was studied by considering the case of pure iron, stainless steel 316L and titanium.Moreover, we studied the possibility of obtaining in-situ alloys during the SLM manufacturing technique from mixtures of powders.Tests were conducted from mixtures Mg/Al, Fe/Ni and Ti/Ni. In all cases we were able to obtain in-situ alloys for areas covered composition corresponding to practical applications (lightweight structures, low coercivity magnetic alloy, shape memory alloy). The properties of material obtained from the characterizations performed, which are comparable with the conventional development and implementation.