Study on the designing rules and processability of porous structure based on selective laser melting (SLM)

Abstract

Porous structures are widely used in medical implant, aerospace and other light-weight manufacturing fields. The research on processability and fabricating process are of great importance to laser addictive manufacturing of porous structure, therefore formulating several rules for SLM fabrication of porous structure is necessary. This article had studied the designing rules and the key points to fabricate the porous structure precisely based on selective laser melting (SLM). In order to obtain the fabricating effect of the pre-designed porous structure, besides optimizing fabricating process, there are still a few problems to be solved gradually, including the critical inclined angle, the fabricating resolution, powder adhesion, designing unit cell and porous structure that fit for SLM process. Through the experiments of fabricating overhanging structures with different inclined angles, the critical inclined angle for designing the porous structure was got. Through designing the thin walls and cylinders with different geometrical dimensions, the SLM fabricating resolution is obtained. Then, based on the critical inclined angle and the geometrical resolution, the octahedral unit cell structure and corresponding design rules that fitted for SLM process were proposed. At last, the experiment of fabricating porous structure was conducted and the pore's sizes were also measured. The results proved that the porous structure can be well fabricated by SLM. This study provides theoretical basis for designing and manufacturing of controllable porous structure based on SLM technique.