Welding of Ti-5Al-5Mo-5 V-1Cr-1Fe parts manufactured in the Electron Beam Melting

One of the limitations to the powder bed fusion technology is the size of the machine work area and thus the size of the manufactured parts. In order to manufacture a part which is larger than the work area, the part needs to be divided into components, manufactured separately and subsequently joined together. The joining method used in this research is Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding with non-consumable electrode. The samples used in this research were made of near-beta titanium alloy Ti-5Al-5Mo-5V-1Cr-1Fe (Ti-55511) in various orientations with the use of EBM, and subsequently TIG welded with the use of SPT-2 as filler material. In order to remove the undesired microstructure resulting from the joining process, a heat treatment procedure was applied. Mechanical tests of the welded and heat-treated samples manufactured with the EBM technology demonstrated the manufacturing orientation not have a significant influence on the obtained properties. The tension and bending tests have shown that fractures occurred in the weld, in the zone subjected to the most significant plastic strain. The tests have proven that the mechanical properties of EBM-manufactured samples are similar to those obtained in the welds of parts manufactured with conventional methods. (c) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).