Computational Investigation of Synchronized Multibeam Strategies for the Selective Laser Melting Process

The selective laser melting process features a nearly incomparable freedom of design. But its potential is still limited due to remaining porosity, cracking, distortion, low build-up rates and a limited range of materials. While there is some progress in process control and multiple parallel scan fields to tackle these issues, the potential of synchronized multibeam strategies has not yet been investigated. The presented synchronized multibeam approach is characterized by two widely overlapping scan fields fed by two independent laser sources that can be controlled to work in a synchronized manner with or without a defined offset. This allows a selective manipulation of the local temperature field and thus of melt pool dynamics, the temperature gradients and cooling rates, which are all influencing the processes' porosity, cracking and distortion behavior. Therefore the influences of these strategies on the melt pool dimensions and dynamics as well as the temperature gradients are investigated in this work.