Influence of exposure time on energy consumption and mechanical properties of SLM fabricated parts

Abstract

Purpose Many process parameters in selective laser melting (SLM) can be configured to optimize build time, which directly relates to energy consumption, and to achieve acceptable part quality. This study aims to investigate whether energy can be effectively reduced with acceptable mechanical properties. The influence of exposure time is primarily focused to correlate energy consumption to mechanical properties. Design/methodology/approach Through single-factor design and experiment result analysis, three levels of exposure time were examined in fabricating two sets of sample parts, for energy analysis and mechanical property tests. Manufacturing power profile was measured online, and four mechanical properties, tensile, flexural, torsional strengths and part density, were investigated. A graphical growth rate tendency (GRT) plot is proposed to jointly analyze multiple variables. Findings Energy consumption increases in fabricating a same part with the increase of exposure time in the tested range, but exposure time was found to influence build power rather than build time in the given SLM system. Mechanical properties do not increase linearly, and grow at different rates. It is found that within the tested range, increased energy consumption brought to a small improvement of part density, but a notable improvement of tensile strength and maximum torque. Practical implications Producing quality SLM parts can be energy-effective through quantitative study. The proposed GRT plot is an intuitive visual aid to compare the growth rates of different variables, which offers more information to additive manufacturing practitioners. Originality/value In this research, energy consumption and mechanical property are jointly analyzed for the first time to advance the knowledge of energy-effective SLM fabrication. This helps additive manufacturing technology to be truly energy-efficient and environmental-friendly.

An investigation on energy consumption and part quality of stereolithography apparatus manufactured parts

“…Optimizing process parameters is an effective technique to realize energy-effective manufacturing. For other AM systems, SLM has been studied in depth for energy consumption and part quality based on experiments (Zhu et al, 2019b;Peng et al, 2018b). It was found that improving the part quality with an incensement in the electrical energy consumption differs greatly, which is in line with our work.…”

“…Both energy consumption and surface roughness can be optimized by controlling layer thickness for SLS (Strano et al, 2012), which is in line with our work. However, saving electrical energy to obtain an acceptable tensile strength is not recommended in SLM, which was different in SLA (Zhu et al, 2019b;Peng et al, 2018b).…”

“…With the help of a datadriven framework, a parametric model was developed to optimize AM process for minimizing total energy consumption and form errors of AM parts while maximizing part strength (Paul and Anand, 2015). For bridging energy consumption and part quality, the influence of exposure time on both mechanical properties and energy consumption of SLM fabricated parts were assessed (Peng et al, 2018b). It was illustrated that energy consumption increased by increasing the exposure time and mechanical properties were enhanced with more energy consuming.…”

Effects of processing parameters on the thermal behaviour of AlSi10Mg during pulse-selective laser melting

“…Therefore, it is of great importance to investigate the effect of process parameters on material thermal behaviour based on numerical simulation. At present, the numerical simulation research on the influence of parameterization of SLM is mainly about continuous SLM, and there are few reports on pulse-laser SLM, where all powder will experience the irradiation of the laser centre for a continue SLM system, while part of powder experiences the irradiation of the laser centre for a pulse-laser SLM system whose manufacturing process is that laser scans powder discontinuously, point by point [5]. Ahmed Hussein et al conducted a finite element simulation of the temperature fields in single layers in SLM and suggested that the predicted length of the molten pool increases at higher scan speed [6].…”