Cross-Contamination Quantification in Powders for Additive Manufacturing: A Study on Ti-6Al-4V and Maraging Steel

Abstract

Metal additive manufacturing is now taking the lead over traditional manufacturing techniques in applications such as aerospace and biomedicine, which are characterized by low production volumes and high levels of customization. While fulfilling these requirements is the strength of metal additive manufacturing, respecting the tight tolerances typical of the mentioned applications is a harder task to accomplish. Powder bed fusion (PBF) is a class of additive manufacturing in which layers of metal powder are fused on top of each other by a high-energy beam (laser or electron beam) according to a computer-aided design (CAD) model. The quality of raw powders for PBF affects the mechanical properties of additively manufactured parts strongly, and therefore it is crucial to avoid the presence of any source of contamination, particularly cross-contamination. In this study, the identification and quantification of cross-contamination in powders of Ti-6Al-4V and maraging steel was performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) techniques. Experimental results showed an overall good reliability of the developed method, opening the way for applications in machine learning environments.

The effects of powder reuse on the mechanical response of electron beam additively manufactured Ti6Al4V parts

“…Consequently, the recycled powder will not have the same physical and chemical properties as the virgin powder [10,11]. Ensuring the quality of recycled powder is one of the key parameters to maintain consistency in build properties [12][13][14]. Recently, several industries and government agencies are focusing on the development of standards and qualification of AM powder feedstock to establish a feedstock-parameter-structure-properties relationship.…”

“…Research has been performed to understand the effects of recycling on powder and part properties in different materials such as IN718 [15][16][17][18][19], AlSi10Mg [17,20], Ti6Al4V [13,17,18,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27] and 316L austenitic steel [12] in both the EB-PBF and laser powder-bed fusion (L-PBF) processes. In EB-PBF, Gruber et al [19] reported changes in the surface chemistry of the IN718 powder particles after multiple reuses.…”

Influence of the AlSi7Mg0.6 Aluminium Alloy Powder Reuse on the Quality and Mechanical Properties of LPBF Samples

“…Many authors [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ] have been investigating the effect of powder particle size and oxygen content during the LPBF process on the results of its processing. All the researchers agreed that the powder used in consecutive processes must be free of contamination, e.g., oxidation and cross-contamination, which can occur accidentally by mixing metal powders of different chemical compositions [ 9 ]. Even spatters formed during the metal powder processing can be treated as contamination, even though the chemical composition remains the same.…”

Evolution of Non-metallic Inclusions Through Processing in Ti-V Microalloyed 316L and Al-V Microalloyed 17-4PH Stainless Steels for Hipping Applications

“…Quasi-automated and automated SEM/EDS analyses have been extensively used among academia, [19][20][21][22][23][24] industry, [25][26][27] and other organizations [29] in the last few years for non-metallic inclusions characterization for clean steelmaking and quality control. In particular, SEM/EDS in conjunction with statistical data analysis has recently been proposed by Santecchia et al [22] for evaluation and benchmarking aiming at standardization, quality control, and quality assurance.…”