Advances in Characterization and Certification of Additively Manufactured Alloys and Their Feed Materials

Additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology has improved significantly over the last few years and now is routinely being applied for the manufacture of a wide range of advanced materials. Metal alloys, and in-service parts can now be printed from a fine powder mix (feed material) that is fused by a laser, building up the product layer by layer. Metal alloys fused together in this process may produce products with slightly different mechanical and chemical characteristics than products produced by casting the alloys with a similar chemical composition. Many of these printed metal products are being used in aerospace and medical applications where product quality is critical.

The chemical characteristics of the feed materials and the metal alloys are typically evaluated using analytical techniques such as Inductively Coupled Plasma Spectrometry (ICPOES, ICPMS), Glow Discharge Mass Spectrometry (GD-MS), Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), XRF, Instrumental Gas Analysis (IGA) and Residual Gas Analysis (RGA). Comparative analytical techniques require calibration and verification with certified reference materials. While certified reference materials exist for many cast alloy grades, there currently are limited reference materials for additively manufactured powders, or for the alloys produced by this process.

We present new, certified reference materials of additively manufactured powders for three commonly printed alloy grades; Ti-6Al-4V, 316L type stainless steel, and Inconel 718, and include our findings from chemical characterization studies. These alloy types have widespread applications in aerospace, and in medical device industry. In addition, we present advances in reference materials for the alloys printed from these powders to alloy quality control at the pre-printing and posting printing stage to monitor any variation induced by the printing process. The Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) have been produced using an ISO 17034 accredited process, and chemical analysis has been conducted in an ISO/IEC 17025:2017, ISO 9001:2015, and Nadcap accredited, materials characterization laboratory.