Processing of Ti alloys by additive manufacturing: a comparison of the microstructures obtained by laser cladding, selective laser melting and electron beam melting

Additive manufacturing processes such as laser cladding (LC) or selective laser melting (SLM) appear very promising in view of an economic near-net-shape production – and also, in the case of LC, the restoration - of complex and (almost) fully dense parts from Ti alloys. Both techniques involve the melting of a metallic powder with a laser. In the SLM process, the metallic powder is deposited layer by layer in a powder bed and then molten locally according to the desired shape, whereas in LC, the metallic powder is directly projected onto a substrate through a nozzle coaxial with the laser beam.
The present research aims at comparing Ti-6Al-4V samples processed by these two techniques with reference samples produced by electron beam melting (EBM), another well established additive manufacturing process (patented by Arcam AB Company) in which a powder bed is molten locally by means of an electron beam.
In all three processes, the melt pool undergoes an ultrafast cooling and solidifies very rapidly once the beam has left the area, thus giving rise to strongly out-of-equilibrium microstructures. Yet, each one of these processes also has its own specificities e.g. in terms of scanning strategy and of working atmosphere (low vacuum vs. protective Ar flow). In the present work, the microstructures obtained by these three processes have been compared in details, with a particular attention for characteristics such as porosity, grain size, and the various phases present. Since epitaxial growth of the newly deposited layer on the material previously solidified has been shown [1, 2] to exert a strong influence on the microstructure and on the resulting mechanical properties, great care has been taken to study the microstructural anisotropy associated with each one of the three processes.