Aluminum Alloy for Additive Manufacturing in Automotive Production
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Aluminum Alloy for Additive Manufacturing in Automotive Production
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AUTHOR
Currently available materials for additive manufacturing have not been specifically developed for the automotive industry. Particularly for crash-relevant applications only few alloys are available. Against this background, Edag and its partners in the project CustoMat_3D researched a novel aluminum alloy for automotive applications.
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING ALLOY FOR SERIES PRODUCTION
New drivetrain technologies, automated driving and the collapse of the market as a result of the coronavirus pandemic are causing major upheavals in the automo tive industry. Electrification in particular is further blurring the differences be
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tween vehicle categories, making it increasingly difficult to differentiate between luxury and sports cars. Addi tive manufacturing reveals great poten tial for resolving this challenge. The use of additive manufacturing makes both lighter and individualized vehicles possi ble from a technical and an economic point of view. For the standard produc
Stefan Caba is Project Manager Lightweight Innovations at Edag Engineering GmbH in Fulda (Germany).
tion of additively manufactured metallic components, however, no alloys capable of meeting all the requirements of the manufacturers are available as yet. This is where the CustoMat_3D project comes in, a project that saw the development of a new aluminum alloy, the correspond ing production processes, simulation possibilities and applications. The aim
was to find an alloy which would com bine good workability, high strength and great durability at a competitive price. The definition of the alloy was based on these specifications. To these were added specific requirements such as paintability, joining technologies and corrosion properties. It also needed to be possible to atomize the alloy into fine powder, which is melted down in the subsequent process. AlSi10Mg, an alloy already established on the market, was taken as a reference to be improved upon in terms of properties. The alloy system chosen was a silicon-magnesium alloy. Alloys in this series are characterized not just by low corrosion but also by the possibility of carrying out thermal treat ments. The weldability essential for pro cessing in selective laser melting was also given. Within the alloy system, five alloys were systematically defined by partner Leibniz IWT and methodically investigated. The powder atomization was carried out in a laboratory at Ecka Granules Germany. A narrow particle size distribution was achieved, ensuring processability.
ADJUSTABLE DUCTILIT Y AND STRENGTH
The manufacturing process was devel oped by Fraunhofer IAPT. To this end, test specimens of the alloys were first produced, for which basic mechanical properties such as hardness, tensile strength and pore content were deter mined. The alloys with the highest potential then passed through a series of tests for different heat treatment strat egies, thus enabling the properties to be further
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