In-Situ Alloying of Al-Cu Processed through Laser Powder BedFusion (LPBF)

Pre-alloyed powders are usually used for laser powder bed Fusion (LPBF) process. It is a novelmanufacturing process, in which the powder properties is a key characteristic in the production process.Thus, the process is restricted by commercially available powders. Using in-situ alloying enablesprocessing of alloys other than commercially available. Therefore, development of methods such as in-situalloying is necessary. In this study a mixture of aluminum and copper powder was used to prepare samplesof in-situ Al-5Cu alloy through LPBF. An attempt was made to manufacture dense samples by employinga wide range of process parameters. The results revealed successful alloying with a microstructure ofhomogeneous chemical composition and enough relative density (less than 1% porosity). According to theresults, with increasing the volumetric energy density, more porosity was observed. In contrast, sampleswith high relative density were obtained at low volumetric energy densities. Moreover, microhardness ofdense samples has increased significantly up to two times of CP-aluminum. However, there was somemicrocracks due to micro-segregation.

In-Situ Alloying of Al-Cu Processed through Laser Powder BedFusion (LPBF) Keywords:

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) , Selective Laser Melting (SLM) , In-Situ Alloying , Process Parameters