Laser additive manufacturing of 3D meshes for optical applications

Abstract

Selective laser melting (SLM) is a widely used additive manufacturing process that can be used for printing of intricate three dimensional (3D) metallic structures. Here we demonstrate the fabrication of titanium alloy Ti–6Al–4V alloy based 3D meshes with nodally-connected diamond like unit cells, with lattice spacing varying from 400 to 1000 microns. A Concept Laser M2 system equipped with laser that has a wavelength of 1075 nm, a constant beam spot size of 50μm and maximum power of 400W was used to manufacture the 3D meshes. These meshes act as optical shutters / directional transmitters and display interesting optical properties. A detailed optical characterisation was carried out and it was found that these structures can be optimised to act as scalable rotational shutters with high efficiencies and as angle selective transmission screens for protection against unwanted and dangerous radiations. The efficiency of fabricated lattice structures can be increased by enlarging the meshing size.

Power Density Distribution for Laser Additive Manufacturing (SLM): Potential, Fundamentals and Advanced Applications

“…There are several possibilities for improving the efficiency of selective laser melting with no loss in quality of the produced object during energy transformation from the laser source to the absorption of the energy during formation of the molten pool, mentioned in Table 1 [61,62]. The described possibilities have no visible effect on the improvement of process efficiency [63][64][65], except the last one, which can theoretically improve the efficiency by more than 2-3 times [66][67][68].…”

Optimization of SLM process parameters for Ti6Al4V medical implants

“…Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing technique that produces near fully dense metal parts directly from a computer-aided design by adding layer upon layer (Essa et al , 2017; Kruth et al , 2004; Mumtaz and Hopkinson, 2009; Essa et al , 2018). The main concept is based on a laser beam that passes over a thin layer of powder and diffuses it selectively to the desired shape.…”

Potentiale additiv gefertigter Gitterstrukturen – ein Review

“…Diamantförmige TPMS-Zellen wurden dabei als optische Verschlüsse eingesetzt. Daraus ergibt sich das Potential zur richtungsabhängigen Transmission von Licht [70]. Die Transmissionseigenschaften von Zellstrukturen werden auch in der Veröffentlichung von SREEDHAR et al untersucht [71].…”