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Ti–6Al–4V and stainless steel 316L have been processed by selective laser melting under similar conditions, and their microstructures and mechanical behaviours have been compared in details. Under the investigated conditions, Ti–6Al–4V exhibits a more complex behaviour than stainless steel 316L with respect to the occurrence of microstructural and mechanical anisotropy. Moreover, Ti–6Al–4V appears more sensitive to the build-up of internal stresses when compared with stainless steel 316L, whereas stainless steel 316L appears more prone to the formation of ‘lack of melting’ defects. This correlates nicely with the difference in thermal conductivity between the two materials. Thermal conductivity was shown to increase strongly with increasing temperature and the thermophysical properties appeared to be influenced by variations in the initial metallurgical state.

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In polyjet printing photopolymer droplets are deposited on a build tray, leveled off by a roller and cured by UV light. This technique is attractive to fabricate heterogeneous architectures combining compliant and stiff constituents. Considering the layer-by-layer nature, interfaces between different photopolymers can be formed either before or after UV curing. We analyzed the properties of interfaces in 3D printed composites combining experiments with computer simulations. To investigate photopolymer blending, we characterized the mechanical properties of the so-called digital materials, obtained by mixing compliant and stiff voxels according to different volume fractions. We then used nanoindentation to measure the spatial variation in mechanical properties across bimaterial interfaces at the micrometer level. Finally, to characterize the impact of finite-size interfaces, we fabricated and tested composites having compliant and stiff layers alternating along different directions. We found that interfaces formed by deposition after curing were sharp whereas those formed before curing showed blending of the two materials over a length scale bigger than individual droplet size. We found structural and functional differences of the layered composites depending on the printing orientation and corresponding interface characteristics, which influenced deformation mechanisms. With the wide dissemination of 3D printing techniques, our results should be considered in the development of architectured materials with tailored interfaces between building blocks.