Carburization Heat treatment of Selective Laser Melted 20MnCr5 Steel

As a novel manufacturing technology additive manufacturing has advantages such as energy saving, less material waste, faster design-to-build time, design optimization, reduction in manufacturing steps, and product customization [1] compared to conventional manufacturing. Heat treatment is widely used to improve the properties of conventional manufactured steel parts. The response of additively manufactured steel parts to heat treatment may be different from conventionally manufactured steel parts. An understanding of heat treatment processes for additively manufactured steel parts is necessary to develop the heat treatment process parameters. In the present work 20MnCr5 steel is selected to investigate the carburization of additively manufactured parts. These parts were fabricated by selective laser melting for the carburization study. Before carburizing, a normalization process was conducted on both additively manufactured and wrought 20MnCr5 AM parts. The objective of this project is to determine the carburization performance of additively manufactured steel parts. The results for the AM parts in terms of carbon concentration and microhardness profiles are compared with the results for the wrought steel.

1. Jamshidinia, M., et al., Additive manufacturing of steel alloys using laser powder-bed fusion. Advanced Materials & Processes, 2015. 173(1): p. 20-24.