Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM) Material and Process Development

Additive Manufacturing, known as 3D Printing or Direct Manufacturing, has become the leading edge manufacturing technology. Today Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM) is a reality, not only for prototype fabrication, also for functional parts in various industries. As the industry progresses towards implementing more critical parts, new material development and process optimization are imperative. Current materials used in MAM are based on the existing wrought, cast, powder metallurgy (P/M) and weld materials that may not be suitable for MAM, as they clearly do not produce the same structure in meso scale and cause uncertainty in mechanical properties similar to those in welding. This makes the MAM products vulnerable in critical components leading to use of knock down factors during design, similar to those in welded joint design. In order to fully exploit the advantages of MAM it is necessary to design new AM materials that respond better to the processing methods yet have superior mechanical properties than current wrought, cast, or P/M materials.. This presentation will discuss the current status of conventional alloy development techniques for this very rapidly growing industry and lay out a simple, inexpensive, yet comprehensive test program for new material and corresponding MAM process development. This presentation will provide step by step methodology for new and existing material and process development protocol for Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) as well as Directed Energy Deposition (DED) methods of MAM.