Additive manufacturing of multi-material parts - Design guidelines for manufacturing of 316L/CuCrZr in laser powder bed fusion

Ina Meyer; Marcus Oel; Tobias Ehlers; Roland Lachmayer

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18301

Additive manufacturing of multi-material parts - Design guidelines for manufacturing of 316L/CuCrZr in laser powder bed fusion

Heliyon. 2023 Jul 26;9(8):e18301. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18301. eCollection 2023 Aug.

Authors

Ina Meyer¹, Marcus Oel¹, Tobias Ehlers¹, Roland Lachmayer¹

Affiliation

¹ Institute of Product Development (IPeG), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover, An der Universität 1, 30823 Garbsen, Germany.

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) can be used to produce multi-material parts in which the material can be varied voxel-wise in all three spatial directions. This means that the paradigm of the homogeneous material can be abandoned and local effects such as heat conduction or damping can be selectively adjusted in the part. Recently, continuous development of machine technology has allowed the production of multi-metal materials in laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/MM). Compared to other additive manufacturing processes for multi-material production, this allows greater design freedom and detail accuracy to be realized. However, due to the novel character of multi-material manufacturing in PBF-LB, the process knowledge for successful and reproducible fabrication is currently lacking. This paper focuses on establishing design guidelines for manufacturing the material pairing of stainless steel 316L (1.4404) and copper alloy CuCrZr (CW106C). The article is accompanied by the development of a specific process chain. As a result of this work, design guidelines for multi-material parts are available for the first time, in regard to arrangement, size, overhangs, economy, powder quality and laser scanning.

Keywords: Design guidelines; Effect-engineering; Laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB); Multi-material additive manufacturing (MMAM); Process chain.