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Additive Manufacturing Notes

Additive Manufacturing (Swansea University)

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Additive Manufacturing Notes – Karan Goldenwalla

STANDARD DEFINITION OF ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

 A process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer,
as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies.

Generic Steps of AM Process

1. Create a 3D model
2. Convert CAD model into suitable format (e.g. STL)
3. Import file into slicing software
4. In the software, position the part on build plate and add support
5. Using slicing software, slice 3d model into series of layers
6. Export sliced file and transfer to AM machine
7. Commence build
8. Remove built from machine which may require extraction from powder bed and
removal of support structures
9. Undertake post-processing steps such as sand blasting or heat treatment

TYPES and Pros and Cons of AM Processes

Technology AM Process Typical Materials Advantages Disadvantages

Digital Light VAT Liquid Allows concurrent Limited product

Processing Polymerisation photopolymer production; thickness; slow
complex shapes production;
and sizes; high limited range of
precision materials
Stereo lithography VAT Liquid Complex High cost of
Polymerisation photopolymer, geometries; ownership; post-
composites detailed parts; curing required;
smooth finish; fast requires support
turnaround structures
Fused deposition Material extrusion Thermoplastics Strong parts; Poorer surface
modelling complex finish and slower
geometries build times than
SLA
Direct metal laser Powder bed fusion Stainless steel, Dense Needs finishing;
sintering cobalt chrome, components; not suitable for
nickel alloy intricate large parts
geometries
Electron beam Powder bed fusion Titanium powder, Speed; less Needs finishing;
melting cobalt chrome distortion of parts; difficult to clean
less material the machine;
wastage harmful Xrays
Selective laser Powder bed fusion Paper, plastic, Requires no Accuracy limited

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sintering metal, glass, support to powder particle

ceramic, structures; high size; rough surface
composites heat; chemical finish
resistant; high
speed
Selective heat Powder bed fusion Thermoplastic Lower cost than New technology
sintering powder SLS; complex with limited track
geometries; no record
support structures
required; quick
turnaround

Plaster-based 3D Binder jetting Bonded plaster, Lower price; Limited choice of

printing plaster enables colour materials; fragile
composites printing; high parts
speed; excess
powder can be
reused
Powder bed and Binder jetting Ceramic powders, Full colour Limited accuracy;
inkjet head metal laminates, models; poor surface finish
printing acrylic, sand, inexpensive; fast
composites to build
Laminated object Sheet lamination Paper, plastic, Relatively less Less accurate;
manufacturing metal laminates, expensive; no non-homogenous
ceramics, toxic materials; parts
composites quick to make big
parts
Ultrasonic Sheet lamination Metal and metal Quick to make big Parts with
consolidation alloys parts; faster build relatively less
speeds of newer accuracy and
systems; generally inconsistent
non-toxic quality; need for
materials post processing
Laser metal Directed energy Metal and metal Multi-material Relatively higher
deposition deposition alloys printing capability; cost of systems;
ability to build support structures
large parts; are required; need
production for post-
flexibility processing
activities to
achieve smooth
finish

Types of Metal Fabrication

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 Powder bed fusion

 Systems which sinter the powder
 Systems which melt the powder using lasers
 Systems which use electron beams to melt the powder
 Direct Laser deposition
 Laser Cladding
 Direct Metal Deposition
 Wire Fed AM
 Laser Based (WAAM)
 Electron beam melting

Definition of Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) Scale

 TRL or Technology Readiness Level is a metric first developed by NASA in the 1980s to
describe the readiness and risk of the using new technology on space missions. The scale
goes from 1 to 9, with levels 1-2 representing barely a concept through to level 9 being a
technology which is proved in a real deployment. Most AM metal applications are in the
TRL levels 4-6.

POWDER BED SYSTEM

Powder bed and build plate

 Base plate has dimensions 250x250x15mm, and it

bolted to the vertical z-stage directly below the F-
theta lens.
 In the AM250, the base plate can be heated up to
140°C, and newer machines may go as high as
140°C. Heating the base plate has some benefit in
reducing the residual stress levels and reducing hot
cracking of the part during the build.
 Standard laser power is 400W

Example of AM250 build plate with

components (Adequate spacing at
least 5mm on either side of cylinder,
working distance is 210mm.

Heat transfer mechanisms in AM

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 Wavelength and power of laser play a major role in amount of energy imparted by
radiation in focal zone.
 Convection in melt pool can occur due to various factors, such as driven convection,
surface tension driven convection (Marangoni convection). These can be important to
shape and stability and melt pool, which will affect porosity.
 When laser has melted material, surface tension, wetting of liquid material with non-
melted feedstock and capillary forces may have some effect of shape of melt pool.
 When dealing with granular or powder materials, variations in size between particles,
and the way in which these are located under the focal zone may affect the starting
porosity of the bed, which will reduce the final density.

Conduction, Convection, Radiation

 Conductive HT occurs within all phases because of heat gradients, it is fundamentally

due to collision between molecules and migration of free electrons
 Radiative HT (Hot to Cold) occurs by emission of electromagnetic waves from any
heated surface and can be transmitted through all phases or even without material
 Convective HT occurs in liquid/gas phases when interfaces are present primarily by
movement on the fluid side and may arise due to a number of different mechanisms
(surface tension, composition, density variation, pressure differentials ...)

Heating, melting & solidification

 The specific heat capacity of a material is the amount of heat energy required to change
the temperature of 1kg of the substance by 1°C.
 The specific latent heat of fusion of a substance is the heat energy required to change
1kg of solid at its melting point to 1kg of liquid – without a change in temperature.

Convective Heat Flows in AM

 Natural Convection results from changes in density due to temperature to get to the
Bousinessq approximation
 Gravitation Convection may be due to non-temperature driven density variations such
as composition
 Forced convection results from pressure driven flow which drives temperature away
from the interface
 Marangoni convection results from the changes in surface tension due to temperature
and/or compositional variation at the interface
 Granular Convection is caused by vibration of powders and granulated materials in
containers, subject to vibration where an axis of vibration is parallel to the force of
gravity
 Capillary action is a phenomenon where liquid spontaneously rises in a narrow space
such as a thin tube, or in porous materials.

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AM Defects

 Porosity
 Residual stress
 Geometrical shrinkage
 Delamination of layers
 Toppling, sinking or creeping in certain areas due to build
 Surface roughness due to high cooling rates
 Stepped Geometries

Porosity

 Porosity occurs when there are empty spaces in a material.

 Causes of porosity in manufactures materials varied.
 Porosity and density are inversely related – the higher the density, the lower the
porosity.
 Direct measurements or density (weighing or Archimedes) are used to determine
relative density and get indication of porosity
 A porous material can also be sectioned, and depending on the size of porosity, optical
image analyse can be used to establish relative density.
 Porosity has significant effect on almost all mechanical properties, including surface
roughness, corrosion resistance, tensile strength and ductility, fatigue strength, impact
energy, elastic properties, etc.
 Porosity can be minimised by careful selection of optimal build parameters through
design of experiment test. Mostly, the higher laser power will decrease porosity, up to
an extent where too much power will be detrimental. Powder size distributions and
morphology affect final porosity of built part, so need to be selected carefully.
 Post processing steps such as hot isostatic pressing can be used to close most pores
within a part, but temp-pressure cycles need to be optimised as they can lead to
distortions of geometry.

Residual Stress

Residual Stresses are stresses that remain inside a material, when it has reached
equilibrium with its environment.

 Type 1 residual stresses, which vary over large distances, namely the dimensions of the
part. These macro stresses can result in large deformations of the part.
 Type II and III residual stresses, which occur due to different phases in the material and
due to dislocations at atomic scale.

Temperature Gradient (heating)

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Since top layer is restricted by lower layers, the steep thermal gradients give rise to elastic
and eventually plastic compression in top layer

Thermal contraction (cooling)

This happens during solidification from melting when shrinkage takes place and tensile
stress occurs in the added layer, with compressive stress in lower layers.

Major methods for determining residual stresses

 hole drilling and ring core

 layer removal
 sectioning
 x-ray diffraction
 ultrasonic
 magnetic methods

Surface Roughness

 Surface roughness is a measure of the level of deviation of a surface from its ideal form.
 One of the many measures of roughness is the arithmetic average Ra which is a measure
given in micrometres (µm). Typical values range from 50 µm (rough) to .2 µm (smooth)
for net-shape processes
 Can be measured using contact (profilometers) and non-contact methods (white light
interferometry
 General indicator of some mechanical properties, as cracks and corrosions tend me to
be initiated by irregularities at the surface – fatigue strength linked to surface finish.
 Causes of surface roughness
 Modulation of the laser in horizontal plane
 Balling/break-up of laser tracks
 Size of powder particles used
 Soot/dust/condensate
 Shrinkage/pitting
 In SLM machine parameters can be selected to minimise surface roughness. For parts
with low porosity, finishing operations such as sand blasting, vibratory polishing, shot
peening used to reduce surface roughness to well below 1 micrometre (depending on
material), but the success of these finishing operations is part dependent. Complex
internal geometries may be difficult to polish and be expensive.

De-Lamination

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 Delamination is identified by a peeling back of the layers along the deposited layer,
typically, but not always most visible at corners.
 The level of fusion between one layer and the next is too low to handle the thermal
stresses of the upper-deposited layer, causing delamination.
 The root layers include the interlayer bonds weakened by the formation of oxide
layers, brittle alloys with intermetallic phases, significant balling or wide powder size
distributions.
 Machine parameters which affect bonding in the vertical direction (power, exposure
time and layer thickness) can be optimised to reduce its occurrence.

Geometrical Shrinkage and Distortion

 Volumetric of thermal shrinkage is a defect manifested by a constant or linear

variation through the build in specific directions.
 For single components, shrinkage can be compensated for by oversizing in the
required direction, but predicting it is difficult so trial runs are necessary
 Compensating for localised shrinkage due to localised different rates of cooling of
complex shapes difficult.

Toppling, sinking or creeping

 Selective laser melting requires a base-plate to build from, which ultimately means
any non-vertical or non-horizontal surfaces will have to be grown at an angle.
 It is not possible to build surfaces at angles lower than 45 degrees to the horizontal
without using support structures.
 Sinking also seen when too much laser energy is put into parts.

Primary process control parameters of powder bed fusion process

 Point distance is the distance between the laser

spots and is typically in the range of 30 to 120µm.
 Exposure time (ET) is the duration of time the
laser is on during the pulse and typically ranges
from 50-150µs
 Hatch spacing describes the distance between one
melt line and another

Marangoni convection, why it differs from other forms of convection, and how it affects
dimension of melt pool

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 As described in the previous chapter, Marangoni convection occurs because of

changes in surface tension due to temperature or composition. This differs to natural
or forced convection in which the drivers behind the physical transportation of heat
are a result of changes in density or pressure.
 Small changes in composition can actually reverse the Marangoni convection flow
within the melt pool, as is observed in the melt pool of some types of steel. The level
of Marangoni convection can widen and deepen the melt pool.
 Thus, if one also takes into account that Marangoni convection can affect the width
of the melt-pool, one can say that Marangoni convection will also have an effect on
the stability of the melt-pool which leads to balling, and manifested in defects such
as surface roughness, porosity and geometrical tolerances.

Cross-sectional profile of solidified weld

 As in welding, the cross sectional profile of the melt pool can take various modes.
 Conduction mode – Conduction welding is performed at low energy density,
typically around 0.5 MW/cm2, forming a weld nugget that is shallow and wide. The
heat to create the weld into the material occurs by conduction from the surface.
Typically this can be used for applications that require an aesthetic weld and when
particulates are a concern, such as certain battery sealing applications.
 Transition mode – occurs at medium power density, around 1 MW/cm2, and results
in more penetration than conduction mode. The keyhole is present but has shallow
penetration and provides a typical weld aspect ratio (depth/width) of around 1. This
mode is used almost exclusively by pulsed Nd:YAG laser, for many spot and seam
welding applications.
 Keyhole or penetration mode – Increasing the peak power density beyond around
1.5MW/cm2 shifts the weld to keyhole mode, which is characterized by deep narrow
welds with an aspect ratio greater than 1.5. Figure 2 shows how increasing the peak
power density beyond 1 MW/cm2 moves the weld from conduction to penetration
or keyhole welding.

Optimisation by Design of Experiments

 In ANOVA (Analysis of variances), design of experiments can be done using

orthogonal arrays with values of the parameters taken at extremum, and optimal
values located by testing only a fraction of the number of experiments required in a
full factorial set of tests.
 In an experiment, we deliberately change one or more process variables (or factors/
parameters) in order to observe the effect the changes have on one or more
response variables.

General set of 7 steps in undertaking a DoE

1. Set objectives

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2. Select process parameters/levels

3. Select an experiment design
4. Execute the design
5. Check data is consistent with experimental assumptions
6. Analyse and interpret the results
7. Use/present the results

Powder Size Distributions

 The size distribution of a powder is one of the most important characteristics of a

powder, and cannot only be different between one alloy and another, but will be
different within batches, so it is used as a form of quality control. Indeed different
applications required very tightly defined powder size distributions for the process to
work properly.
 When dealing with powder size distributions, there are obviously many particles
involved even in small samples. To this extent, it is not very useful to use a single
number to represent the whole, even the average size, so further statistical terms
are used to define the distributions. To this extent the distributions can be
correlated in three fundamental different ways: 1) Based on the number of particles
2) Based on volume 3) Based on the area

Morphology

 Particle shape influences

packing, flow, and
compressibility, provides
information on the powder
fabrication route, and
helps explain many
processing characteristics.
 The surface diameter - 𝑑𝑠
is the diameter of sphere
with the same surface are
as the particle
 The volume diameter - 𝑑𝑣 is the diameter of a sphere having the same volume
 The projected diameter - 𝑑𝑝 is the diameter of a sphere having the same projected
area as that of the particle

 Aspect ratio = Largest dimension / Smallest dimension

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 Aspect ratio ranges from unity (spherical particles) to about 10 for flake-like or
needle-like particles.
 Shape factor is a measure of the ratio of the surface area of the particle to its volume
– normalized by reference to a spherical particle of equivalent volume. So shape
factor for a flake higher than sphere.

True, apparent, and tap densities

 The true density of a powder is the density of the exact same alloy composition in its
solid state, i.e. without any porosity.
 The apparent density of a powder is the mass of a unit volume of loose powder
(g/cm3 ) and is important because it determines the:
 Size of dies required to accommodate the loose powder prior to
compaction
 it is used to design the machinery to transport powder into the die
 it influences the behaviour of the powder during sintering and laser
melting
 The Tap density (g/cm3) is the density measured after tapping the powder a set
number of times. The tap density is always greater than the apparent density, and
can be influenced by many of the properties associated with the powder particles,
such as size distributions, morphology as well as solid particle density.

Packing factor

 Packing factor = Apparent density / True density

 If powders of various sizes are present, smaller powders will fit into spaces between
larger ones, thus higher packing factor
 Packing can be increased by vibrating the powders, causing them to settle more
tightly (this occurs when getting the tap density)
 Pressure applied during compaction greatly increases packing of powders through
rearrangement and deformation of particles
 Porosity = 1 – Packing factor

Powder Manufacturing Routes

 Mechanical Processes – Mechanical milling/Alloying

 Electrolytic Processes
 Physical Processes – Gas, Water, Centrifugal, Vacuum & Plasma Atomisation
 Chemical Processes – Chemical reduction, Chemical decomposition

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 Of these, physical based processes such as gas or plasma atomisation can produce
powders which are ideal for P/M and A/M processes, due to tight powder size
distributions, low impurities and a good (rounded) morphology which can be
repeated from batch to batch. This will lead to reliable properties in subsequent P/M
and A/M processes.
 Chemical (Carbonyl nickel and Hydride-Dehydride) and electrolytic routes can
produce cheaper powders which are used in more traditional press and sinter and
metal injection moulding processes

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Additive Manufacturing Data Sheet

The power required for a specific machining operation is given by:

P ( watts )=P0 + k∗MRR

P = Power (W), Po = Idle power (W), k = specific energy (W.s/mm3), MRR = material removal rate
(mm/s)

E( kWh)=P∗time (hours)

CNC Milling

Weight of ingot =Buy−¿−fly ratio∗weight of part

Volume
Duration of milling=
MRR

Powder Bed System

Cylinder Height
Layersrequired=
Standard Layer Thickness

Total area for single layer=Cross sectional area of one part∗number of parts

Fourier Equation of Heat Transfer

ρ Cp ( ∂∂Tt )+u∗∆ T = ∆ λ∗∆ T +Q

T = Temperature (m), t = time (s), u = velocity vector (m/s), Q = heat source (W/m2),
Cp = Specific heat capacity (J/k-k), ρ = Density scalar (kg/m3), λ = Thermal conductivity
(W/m-K)

E H =cm ∆ T

Eh = Heat Energy (Joules), m= mass (kg), T is the temperature change in K or °C, and c is the specific
heat capacity.

E M =mH

Em = Heat Energy to melt (Joules), m= mass (kg), and M is the specific heat capacity (J/kg).

ET =mH +cm ∆ T

q
=h(T s−T f )
A

h = Heat transfer coefficient (W/m2K)

LASER

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Laser energy input ( Joules )=absorpivity∗power ( W )∗time( s)

point distance (mm)

line speed=
exposure time(s)

Cube side length

N 1=
point distance

1∗Cube side length

N 2=N
hatchlength

Cube height
N 3=
Layer thickness

Slice Energy ( J )=Power∗Time

Total Energy ( J ) =N 3∗Slice Energy

Number of Experiments=Levels Parameters

Powder Size Parameters

1 /2
DA= ( )
4A
π

()
1
S
DS = 2
π

1 /3
DV = ( )
6V
π

Largest Dimension
Aspect Ratio=
Smallest Dimension

S
Shape Factor ( k )= D
V A

S = Surface Area, V = Volume

Apparent Density
Packing Factor =
True Density

Porosity=1−Packing Factor

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