Investigations on manufacturability and process reliability of selective laser melting

Selective laser melting is a layer-wise manufacturing process that enables the use of complex geometric shapes in part design and production. An infrared laser beam is focused on a thin layer of metallic powder and selectively deflected in order to scan the cross-section of the parts being built. The process quality is dominated by the consolidation of powder particles through laser beam interaction, the part geometry itself and the arrangement of multiple parts. In this paper, the manufacturability is investigated by characterizing single melt tracks and the buildup of thin wall structures consisting of a few aligned scan tracks.