Madison engineers have found a way to simultaneously mitigate three types of defects in parts produced using a prominent additive manufacturing technique called laser powder bed fusion.
Led by Lianyi Chen, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UW–Madison, the team discovered the mechanisms and identified the processing conditions that can lead to this significant reduction in defects. The researchers detailed their findings in a paper published on November 16, 2024, in the International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture.
"Previous research has normally focused on reducing one type of defect, but that would require the usage of other techniques to mitigate the remaining types of defects," Chen says. "Based on the mechanisms we discovered, we developed an approach that can mitigate all the defects—pores, rough surfaces and large spatters—at once. In addition, our approach allows us to produce a part much faster without any quality compromises."
Multiple industries, including aerospace, medical and energy, are increasingly interested in using additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to produce metal parts with complex shapes that are difficult or impossible to create using conventional methods.
But the big challenge is that metal parts created with additive manufacturing have defects—like pores, or "voids," rough surfaces and large spatters—that significantly compromise the finished part's reliability and durability. These quality problems prevent 3D-printed parts from being used for critical applications where failure is not an option.\
By providing a path for simultaneously increasing part quality and manufacturing productivity, the UW–Madison team's advance could lead to widespread industry adoption of laser powder bed fusion.
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