Development and characterisation of direct laser sintering multicomponent Cu based metal powder

Abstract

Recent advances in direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) have improved this technique considerably; however, it still remains limited in terms of material versatility and controllability of laser processing. In the present work, a multicomponent Cu based metal powder, which consisted of a mixture of Cu, Cu-10Sn and Cu-8 . 4P powder, was developed for DMLS. Sound sintering activities and high densification response were obtained by optimising the powder characteristics and manipulating the processing conditions. Investigations on the microstructural evolution in the laser sintered powder show that liquid phase sintering with partial or complete melting of the binder (Cu-10Sn), but non-melting of the cores of structural metal (Cu) acts as the feasible mechanism of particle bonding. The additive phosphorus acts as a fluxing agent to protect the Cu particles from oxidation and shows a concentration along grain boundaries owing to the low solubility of P in Cu and the short thermal cycle of laser sintering. A directionally solidified microstructure consisting of significantly refined grains is formed, which may be ascribed to laser induced non-equilibrium effects such as high temperature gradient and rapid solidification.

Research on Process and Microstructure Formation of W-Ni-Fe Alloy Fabricated by Selective Laser Melting

“…The topic of SLM mainly dwells on feasible materials and corresponding forming mechanisms. For instance, the fabricating of titanium ( Ref 4,5), iron-base alloys (Ref [6][7][8][9][10][11], nickel-base alloys (Ref [12][13][14], copper-base alloys (Ref [15][16][17][18], titanium-base alloys (Ref 19,20), and metal matrix composites ( Ref 21,22) via laser direct manufacturing has been investigated. However, little work has been reported on the investigation into manufacturing complex W-Ni-Fe parts by SLM.…”

Influence of reinforcement weight fraction on microstructure and properties of submicron WC–Cop/Cu bulk MMCs prepared by direct laser sintering

“…It is known that the DMLS is a complex metallurgical process which involves multiple modes of mass, heat, and momentum transfer [9,10]. The densification level, microstructural features, and the resultant mechanical properties of the laser sintered parts are influenced by both processing parameters (e.g.…”

“…Direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), as a typical rapid prototyping (RP) technique, enables the quick production of complex shaped three-dimensional (3D) parts directly from metal powder [9,10]. The DMLS process creates parts in a layer-by-layer fashion by selectively fusing thin layers of loose powder with a scanning laser beam.…”

“…Alloy 625 [15], Ti6Al4V [16], stainless steel [17], high speed steel [18], low carbon steel [19], and tool steel [20]) and multi-component metal powders (e.g. Ni-CuSn-CuP [21], Ni-alloy-Cu [22], Cu-SCuP [5,14], Cu-CuSn-CuP [10,12], iron-graphite [9,23], Fe-Ni-Cu-Fe 3 P [24], Fe-Ni-Cu-P [25,26], and Fe-C-Cu-Mo-Ni [13]). However, a review of existing literatures reveals that not much previous work has been reported on the basic principles of the fabrication of bulk MMCs using direct laser sintering.…”

The key metallurgical features of selective laser melting of stainless steel powder for building metallic part

“…on the final properties (density, strength, surface roughness, etc) and choose more reasonable forming parameters [8][9][10][11]. Third, seek for more suitable metal powders for SLM to enlarge its application field [12][13][14][15][16]. However, SLM technology is faced with many problems such as low density, balling phenomenon, delaminating, warp and crack etc [17][18][19][20].…”