Selective laser melting is a rapid manufacturing process coming from the rapid prototyping technology, which is widely used in the automotive, aeronautical, medical industry etc. According to the principle of rapid manufacturing, the piece is manufactured layer by layer through the laser sintering or melting the fine powder. Currently, the main powder materials used are metal or polymer materials. The low melting point of these materials facilitates the melting process. However, duo to the high melting point, strong strength at high temperature and low thermal conductivity the application of ceramic materials is limited in the technology of selective laser melting. In this study, selective laser melting of the ceramic yttria stabilized zirconia by a 1μm wavelength fiber laser was explored. The influence of different laser powers and different scanning velocities on the microstructure and the deformation were analyzed, then the micro-hardness and relative density were measured. In particular, the effect of different preheat temperatures on microstructure was investigated. At the same time, the crystal structure and phase transformation during the fabrication were analyzed. Experimental results show that YSZ powder can be completely melted by the near IR fiber laser. With the optimization of the manufacturing parameters, the relative density of sample could reach 91 %. The forming of cracks and pores in the manufactured parts is rarely avoid due to the heterogeneity of distribution of energy. The energy distribution could be improved by optimizing the parameters and the crack lengths can be controlled by preheating the powder bed. In particular, the high temperature (1500 ℃, 2000 ℃ and 2500 ℃) lead the continuous vertical crack becomes messy and short. The transformation of monoclinic and cubic crystal to tetragonal crystal can be observed during the fabrication.
