S041011 The Characteristics of Laser Formed Ti-6A1-4V Compacts

Abstract

This paper deals with the improvement of density and surface roughness of Ti alloy compacts produced by laser forming (or selective laser melting). Laser forming process, as advanced additive manufacturing technique is very reliable technique for the manufacturing of complex shaped parts in low cost and fast processing time. However, the improvement of density and surface roughness is strongly required for the commercial manufacturing process. In this study, we focused on the feeding powder layer height (FLH), which affects to the amount of melting pool. Single layer specimens and multi-layer specimens were fabricated in various FLH under the optimized laser condition. Comparing single and multi-layer specimens, it was confirmed that small FLH is very effective to improve the surface roughness due to the homogeneous powder melting. Moreover, improved surface roughness results good adhesion between layers, and nearly full density (99.8%) could be obtained. Also, high tensile strength (1080 MPa) that is higher than that of ASTM, was obtained in small FLH.