Laser-based powder bed fusion of 3d-multi-material-parts of copper-chrome-zirconia and tool steel

Laser-based powder bed fusion of metals, also referred to as laser beam melting (LBM), is an additive manufacturing method using powder as raw material and a laser for providing the energy to fuse the powder. In this way, parts with a high freedom of design can be produced. The powder delivery system and the general setup used in industrial standard LBM machines today limits the production possibilities to process only one metal alloy per build job, which is referred to as mono-material processing. At Fraunhofer IGCV, a new method was developed to produce parts within one build job that consist out of two materials, also within single powder layers. Therefore, the conventional delivery device was adopted and a suction module was developed and implemented into the machine, to avoid a cross-contamination of powders. In this paper, first results of the 3D-multi-material-process using a copper-chrome-zirconia alloy and tool steel are shown.