Structure control of 316L stainless steel through an additive manufacturing

The 3D printing process is a recent technique, which allows one to produce parts of complex geometry. The influence of printing parameters on the mechanical and structural properties of many materials has been extensively studied. However, despite the considerable amount of research, the task of comparing the results of different scientific groups is complicated. Each research group performs the investigation with different printing conditions. A lot of works contain not full information about the printing process parameters which were applied. This paper presents the results on the mechanical and structural properties of 316L stainless steel according to variable printing parameters, such as laser density energy, scan strategy, and build direction at other fixed conditions. The results reveal a parabolic dependency between the mechanical properties and the laser density energy. The laser density energy of 161 J/mm(3) leads to the best mechanical characteristics (yield strength of 530 MPa, ultimate strength of 580 MPa, and ductility of 63.2%). Scan strategy does not influence the mechanical properties of the samples printed in the vertical direction. At the same time, the strong scan strategy effect is observed for the samples printed in horizontal direction. The difference in the ultimate strength between the vertically and horizontally printed samples reaches up to 70 MPa.