Selective laser melting of aluminium die-cast alloy: Paper presented at Fraunhofer Direct Digital Manufacturing Conference 2014, March 12-14, 2014, Berlin, Germany

The additive manufacturing technology Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is used for direct fabrication of metal-based functional components. SLM is well established in serial production for dental restoration as well as for tooling. Main concern for industrial application remains the scope of processible materials and resulting mechanical properties. Towards processing of aluminium alloys commercially available systems exist with comparability in terms of applied process parameters and resulting mechanical properties remaining a challenge. Often no data are available concerning process parameters and mechanical properties. This holds especially for High-Power SLM systems with increased build rates as a result of extended laser powers of up to 1 kW. Especially when processing aluminium alloys the solidification conditions significantly affect the resulting microstructure in terms of size of dendrites and grains. Consequently, the present paper systematically investigates and correlates the process parameters (e.g. laser power, scan speed, layer orientation, preheating, etc.) on the microstructure and resultant mechanical properties for the die-cast alloy AlSi10Mg. At this, underlying phenomena for typically observed anisotropy of mechanical properties in dependence on layer orientation are further specified