THE EFFECT OF MACHINING PROCESSES ON THE PHYSICAL AND SURFACE MORPHOLOGY OF Ti6Al4V SPECIMENS PRODUCED THROUGH POWDER BED FUSION ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Abstract

The most critical component of Industry 4.0, the new face of the machinery-manufacturing industry sector, is metal additive manufacturing. Laser-based additive manufacturing techniques are dominant for metal additive manufacturing today. In this study, the metal alloy studied is Ti-6Al-4V, one of the essential Ti alloys used in more than 50% of all commercial Ti applications. Ti-6Al-4V parts produced by additive manufacturing are used in the biomedical, aerospace-defence industry, and industrial areas due to their high strength, fatigue behaviour, fracture strength, good corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility. In the study, samples of Ti6Al4V alloy were produced with different manufacturing parameters by the direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) method, which is one of the powder bed fusion methods. Then, the surface qualities of the samples were processed by milling and wire EDM. The effects of machining operations on the surface roughness of the samples were investigated and compared with the surface roughness obtained from the samples produced by the DMLS method. After the optical microscope images of the samples were taken, the physical and surface morphology were examined. Although the mechanical properties of the parts manufactured by DMLS methods were higher, the samples with machining presented higher machinability with lower forces, lower surface roughness. the This is explained that mechanical properties of samples of Ti6Al4V alloy in additive manufacturing are highly dependent on the rapid cooling of the material. Results show that samples of Ti6Al4V manufactured by additive manufacturing has been possible using with machining.