Superior Wear Resistance in EBM-Processed TC4 Alloy Compared with SLM and Forged Samples.

Weiwen Zhang,Lauri Kollo,Dariusz Grzesiak,Chao Yang,Zhi Wang,Peiting Qin,Konda Prashanth

doi:10.3390/ma12050782

Abstract

The wear properties of Ti-6Al-4V alloy have drawn great attention in both aerospace and biomedical fields. The present study examines the wear properties of Ti-6Al-4V alloy as prepared by selective laser melting (SLM), electron beam melting (EBM) and conventional forging processes. The SLM and EBM samples show better wear resistance than the forged sample, which correlates to their higher hardness values and weak delamination tendencies. The EBM sample shows a lower wear rate than the SLM sample because of the formation of multiple horizontal cracks in the SLM sample, which results in heavier delamination. The results suggest that additive manufacturing processes offer significantly wear-resistant Ti-6Al-4V specimens in comparison to their counterparts produced by forging.

Highlights

Additive manufacturing (AM), commonly known as 3D printing, is a process of joining materials to make objects from 3D computer aided design (CAD) data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies [1,2,3]
electron beam melting (EBM) uses a high-energy electron beam to selectively melt a conductive metal powder bed directed by a CAD model under a high vacuum
The XX-ray diffraction (XRD) diffraction patterns of the selective laser melting (SLM) sample indicate the presence of a phase with diffraction peaks at 2θ = 38.581◦ and 2θ = 40.478◦, which has lattice parameters a = 0.292 hexagonal phase with diffraction peaks at 2θ = 38.581° and 2θ = 40.478°, which has lattice parameters nm and c = 0.467 nm

Summary

Introduction

Additive manufacturing (AM), commonly known as 3D printing, is a process of joining materials to make objects from 3D computer aided design (CAD) data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies [1,2,3]. EBM uses a high-energy electron beam to selectively melt a conductive metal powder bed directed by a CAD model under a high vacuum. SLM, which emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s, uses a laser beam during the fabrication process for the selective melting of metallic powders [8,9,10]. Both SLM and EBM offer the flexibility to produce parts of any shape (theoretically) without restrictions [11,12,13]. Some other differences exist between the SLM and EBM processes. The difference in the heat source used means that the focus spot size is different—typically ~80 μm in diameter for SLM and ~100 μm in diameter

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Conclusion