Purpose

The manufacturability of extremely fine porous structures in the SLM process has rarely been investigated, leading to unpredicted manufacturing results and preventing steady medical or industrial application. The research objective is to find out the process limitation and key processing parameters for printing fine porous structures so as to give reference for design and manufacturing planning.

Design/methodology/approach

In metallic AM processes, the difficulty of geometric modeling and manufacturing of structures with pore sizes less than 350 μm exists. The manufacturability of porous structures in selective laser melting (SLM) has rarely been investigated, leading to unpredicted manufacturing results and preventing steady medical or industrial application. To solve this problem, a comprehensive experimental study was conducted to benchmark the manufacturability of the SLM process for extremely fine porous structures (less than 350 um and near a limitation of 100 um) and propose a manufacturing result evaluation method. Numerous porous structure samples were printed to help collect critical datasets for manufacturability analysis.

Findings

The results show that the SLM process can achieve an extreme fine feature with a diameter of 90 μm in stable process control, and the process parameters with their control strategies as well as the printing process planning have an important impact on the printing results. A statistical analysis reveals the implicit complex relations between the porous structure geometries and the SLM process parameter settings.

Originality/value

It is the first time to investigate the manufacturability of extremely fine porous structures of SLM. The method for manufacturability analysis and printing parameter control of fine porous structure are discussed.

中文翻译：

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Ti6Al4V合金激光选区熔化极细孔结构可制造性分析

目的

SLM 工艺中极细多孔结构的可制造性很少被研究，导致不可预测的制造结果并阻碍稳定的医疗或工业应用。研究目的是找出打印精细多孔结构的工艺限制和关键工艺参数，为设计和制造规划提供参考。

设计/方法/方法

在金属增材制造工艺中，孔径小于 350 μm 的结构的几何建模和制造存在困难。选择性激光熔化 (SLM) 中多孔结构的可制造性很少被研究，导致无法预测的制造结果并阻碍稳定的医疗或工业应用。为了解决这个问题，进行了一项全面的实验研究，以对极细孔结构（小于 350 um 和接近 100 um 的限制）的 SLM 工艺的可制造性进行基准测试，并提出一种制造结果评估方法。打印了大量多孔结构样品，以帮助收集用于可制造性分析的关键数据集。

发现

结果表明，SLM工艺可以在稳定的工艺控制下实现直径为90μm的极细特征，工艺参数及其控制策略以及印刷工艺规划对印刷效果有重要影响。统计分析揭示了多孔结构几何形状和 SLM 工艺参数设置之间隐含的复杂关系。

原创性/价值

这是第一次研究SLM极细孔结构的可制造性。讨论了精细多孔结构的可制造性分析和印刷参数控制方法。