Gas flow effects on selective laser melting (SLM) manufacturing performance

This study has been designed to investigate the effect of inert gas flow within the selective laser melting (SLM) process and the effects induced by this gas flow on the reproducibility of the key attributes (porosity and compression strength) created in the construction of porous titanium components. The work quantifies the characteristics of the manufactured parts and relates results of these characteristics to a predicted gas flow in the build chamber. The results were used to produce design iterations of the gas management system to improve the gas flow distribution in the chamber of a MTT ReaLizer SLM250 machine. Further experiments were then carried out to generate statistical data sets to correlate the flow field quantifying the affect of the redesign on the key measured attributes. Results showed that both the value and the standard deviation of the measured attributes were significantly affected by the improved gas flow, with porosity reducing by 1.7% and the standard deviation of compression strength improving from 12 MPa to 5 MPa. The design modifications have been incorporated into a new machine design to enable the production of porous components of closer control and greater reproducibility. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.