Laser Metal Deposition of AlSi10Mg with high build rates

Abstract

Additive manufacturing with aluminum alloys is becoming increasingly important in the automotive industry to meet the growing demand for lightweight construction and flexibility. However, higher build rates and higher process efficiency are necessary for laser metal deposition (LMD) to be more economically competitive. The so called high-speed LMD allows high build rates by partial melting of the powder before it hits the melt pool but is currently limited to coatings of rotationally symmetrical parts. Our goal is to apply this process technology to the additive manufacturing of AlSi10Mg and thereby increase the build rate. In this work we demonstrate a successful build-up of cuboids manufactured with the alloy AlSi10Mg using feed rates ten times higher compared to state of the art. The tensile strength of these cuboids is in the range of 180 to 220 MPa.