Carburizing Properties of Additive Manufactured Steel

Recently, manufacturing that takes advantage of degree of freeness of shape through additive manufacturing is progressing. However, research on the strength properties of these materials manufactured using additive manufacturing is still in its infancy, and there are many unknowns as to how to achieve the desired strength. Strengthening methods using diffusion elements, including carburizing and quenching, have many advantages that cannot be obtained with other methods, such as the ability to create graded strength. On the other hand, there are many disadvantages such as long processing time. In this study, we investigated the diffusion strengthening properties of steel materials made by additive manufacturing. In additively manufactured materials, highly anisotropic diffusion characteristics were confirmed because there is dislocation anisotropy due to the direction of material progress. In addition, since the material properties can be selected, hardening treatment is not recuired, and it has been found that ultra-high strength surface hardened parts can be manufactured with low distortion and at low cost.