Additive manufacturing using tungsten, a brittle material, is difficult because of its high melting point, thermal conductivity, and oxidation tendency. In this study, pure tungsten parts with densities of up to 18.53 g/cm 3 (i.e., 96.0% of the theoretical density) were fabricated by selective laser melting. In order to minimize balling effects, the raw polyhedral tungsten powders underwent a spheroidization process before laser consolidation. Compared with polyhedral powders, the spherical powders showed increased laser absorptivity and packing density, which helped in the formation of a continuous molten track and promoted densification.
In this study, near fully dense (96.5%) pure tungsten bulks were additively manufactured and the cracking behavior was investigated. A crack network with a spacing of * 100 lm was observed in the fabricated bulks. It was observed that the laser scanning strategy, which could tailor the microstructure, affected the crack distribution pattern in fabricated tungsten. The calculated surface temperature difference (7300 K) was much higher than the cracking criterion (800 K) of tungsten, indicating that cracking is almost inevitable in laser additive manufacturing of tungsten. It could be concluded that crack network formed because the cracks emerged in every laser molten track and then interconnected in the layer-by-layer building process.
Spherical powders with good flowability and high stacking density are mandatory for powder bed additive manufacturing. Nevertheless, the preparation of spherical refractory tungsten and tungsten alloy powders is a formidable task. In this paper, spherical refractory metal powders processed by high-energy stir ball milling and RF inductively coupled plasma were investigated. By utilizing the technical route, pure spherical tungsten powders were prepared successfully, the flowability increased from 10.7 s/50 g to 5.5 s/50 g and apparent density increased from 6.916 g cm −3 to 11.041 g cm −3 . Alloying element tantalum can reduce the tendency to microcrack during tungsten laser melting and rapid solidification process. Spherical W-6Ta (%wt) powders were prepared in this way, homogeneous dispersion of tantalum in a tungsten matrix occurred but a small amount of flake-like shape particles appeared after high-energy stir ball milling. The flake-like shape particles can hardly be spheroidized in subsequent RF inductively coupled plasma process, might result from the unique suspended state of flaky particles under complex electric and magnetic fields as well as plasma-particle heat exchange was different under various turbulence models. As a result, the flake-like shape particles cannot pass through the high-temperature area of thermal plasma torch and cannot be spheroidized properly.
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