Commercial Scale Uniform Powder Coating for Metal Additive Manufacturing
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-020-04386-z Ó 2020 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
SURFACE ENGINEERING: APPLICATIONS FOR ADVANCED MANUFACTURING
Commercial Scale Uniform Powder Coating for Metal Additive Manufacturing S.F. LI,1,2,3 K. GENG,1,2 R.D.K. MISRA,4 J.Y. CUI,1,3 D. YE,1,2 Y. LIU,1,2 and Y.F. YANG 1,2,3,5 1.—State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. 2.—University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. 3.—Nanjing IPE Institute of Green Manufacturing Industry, Nanjing 211135, China. 4.—Department of Metallurgical, Materials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Avenue, El Paso, TX 79968, USA. 5.—e-mail: [email protected]
Three-dimensional printing of high laser reflectivity metals and metal matrix composites continues to be a challenge because of loss of laser energy and lack of high-quality composite powders. Modifying powders to enhance the interaction between laser and powder and improve the uniformity of reinforcement is a possible solution. However, traditional powder mixing methods such as ball milling destroy the spherical nature of powders. We report here commercial-scale coating of powder by electroless plating for high laser-reflectivity metals and fluidized bed chemical vapor deposition (FBCVD) for composite powders without changing the sphericity. The results indicated that coating high-laser-absorptivity Co and Ni on Al powder enhances the printability leading to good physical and mechanical properties. Similarly, the composite powder made by FBCVD had a good combination of uniformity, sphericity and flowability, which also exhibited improved printability and excellent mechanical properties for the printed bulk composites.
INTRODUCTION Selective laser melting (SLM, a type of 3D printing) is a process of making dense metallic components from powder through layer-by-layer building. The process has potential to meet the demand of products with complex geometry and desirable properties.1,2 During the last decade, SLM has advanced from creating basic models or rapid prototyping involving a number of alloy systems including Ti-based (mostly Ti–6Al–4V), Fe-based (stainless steels), Al-based (Al–Si–10Mg, Al–Si alloys) and Ni-based (IN625, IN718) alloys.3–8 Some of them have achieved verifiable application in the fields of the aerospace, automotive and biomedical industries, etc.3 However, for high laser-reflectivity
S. F. Li and K. Geng have contributed equally to this work and should be considered as co-first author. (Received June 27, 2020; accepted September 14, 2020)
metals and metal matrix composites (MMCs), 3D printing continues to be a challenge and the progress has been relatively slow. Al and Cu are representative metals with high laser reflectivity, especially at the commonly used laser band (1070 nm) of SLM. An appropriate laserpowder interaction is a prerequisite to achieve highquality printing.9 However, most laser energy is still
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