Abstract
Ti-6Al-4V articles were produced with advanced additive manufacturing technology of Direct Energy Deposition (DED) type using profile electron beam and wire as feedstock material. The key distinctive feature of this additive manufacturing process is the applying of the hollow conical electron beam generated by low-voltage (<20kV) gas-discharge EB gun for heating and melting of the substrate and co-axially fed wire. Such configuration ensures precisely controllable liquid metal transfer from the wire end to the substrate, specific temperature gradients at the fusion area and heat flow from liquid metal pool. Such conditions of heating, melting and cooling during 3D manufacturing processing provide the ability for controllable microstructure formation, including grain size and material texture. Influence of processing parameters and cooling conditions on crystallization, grain formation and intragrain structure of solidified material is discussed. Optimization of processing parameters allowed production of 3D Ti-6Al- 4V articles with isotropic microstructure and mechanical properties which met standard requirements for Ti-6Al-4V alloy.
Highlights
Additive manufacturing (AM) of metals, which initially and for a long time has been considered as the technology for prototyping and research, is increasingly moving toward the category of real industrial technologies [1]
The most important are the mechanical properties, which are provided by various complex factors, such as the chemical composition of 3D printed material, the appearance of defects of various nature, metal structure, residual stresses, etc., which, in turn, are the result of the interaction of complex parameters of a particular printing process
The most critical problems of many metal AM technologies are residual defects, residual stresses and deformations caused by large temperature gradients in the manufactured product, non-uniform properties in different directions, which are associated with the formation of a columnar metal structure in the direction of product growth [4, 5, 6]
Summary
Additive manufacturing (AM) of metals, which initially and for a long time has been considered as the technology for prototyping and research, is increasingly moving toward the category of real industrial technologies [1]. The new additive manufacturing technology of Direct Energy Deposition (DED) type which employs the unique profile electron beam and wire as feedstock material has been invented and patented [7] in Ukraine to solve most of existing problems of metal AM This technology was called the xBeam 3D Metal Printing thanks to the character view of the electron beam. The hollow conical electron beam completely envelopes the feedstock material by precisely regulating the energy flow (Fig.3) It provides absolutely uniform pre-heating and fusing of wire feedstock resulting in continuous transfer of the molten metal from the wire end to the molten pool on the substrate. Wall with the bead's thickness 0.6 mm and width 4.2mm
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