Journal Home Online First Current Issue Archive For Authors Journal Information 中文版

Engineering >> 2015, Volume 1, Issue 1 doi: 10.15302/J-ENG-2015013

Dual-Material Electron Beam Selective Melting: Hardware Development and Validation Studies

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2 Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials Processing Technology (Ministry of Education of China), Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
3 Biomanufacturing and Rapid Forming Technology Key Laboratory of Beijing, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

# These authors contributed equally to this work.

Received: 2015-02-16 Revised: 2015-03-25 Accepted: 2015-03-25 Available online: 2015-03-31

Next Previous

Abstract

Electron beam selective melting (EBSM) is an additive manufacturing technique that directly fabricates three-dimensional parts in a layerwise fashion by using an electron beam to scan and melt metal powder. In recent years, EBSM has been successfully used in the additive manufacturing of a variety of materials. Previous research focused on the EBSM process of a single material. In this study, a novel EBSM process capable of building a gradient structure with dual metal materials was developed, and a powder-supplying method based on vibration was put forward. Two different powders can be supplied individually and then mixed. Two materials were used in this study: Ti6Al4V powder and Ti47Al2Cr2Nb powder. Ti6Al4V has excellent strength and plasticity at room temperature, while Ti47Al2Cr2Nb has excellent performance at high temperature, but is very brittle. A Ti6Al4V/Ti47Al2Cr2Nb gradient material was successfully fabricated by the developed system. The microstructures and chemical compositions were characterized by optical microscopy, scanning microscopy, and electron microprobe analysis. Results showed that the interface thickness was about 300 μm. The interface was free of cracks, and the chemical compositions exhibited a staircase-like change within the interface.

Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Fig. 15

Fig. 16

References

[ 1 ] Y. N. Yan, H. B. Qi, F. Lin, W. He, H. R. Zhang, R. J. Zhang. Produced three-dimensional metal parts by electron beam selective melting. Chin. J. Mech. Eng., 2007, 43(6): 87–92 (in Chinese)

[ 2 ] D. Cormier, O. L. A. Harrysson, T. Mahale, H. A. West. Freeform fabrication of titanium aluminide via electron beam melting using prealloyed and blended powders. Adv. Mater. Sci. Eng., 2008, 2007: 6822–6825

[ 3 ] L. E. Murr, Metal fabrication by additive manufacturing using laser and electron beam melting technologies. J. Mater. Sci. Technol., 2012, 28(1): 1–14

[ 4 ] L. E. Murr, Microstructures of Rene 142 nickel-based superalloy fabricated by electron beam melting. Acta Mater., 2013, 61(11): 4289–4296 link1

[ 5 ] S. H. Sun, Y. Koizumi, S. Kurosu, Y. P. Li, H. Matsumoto, A. Chiba. Build direction dependence of microstructure and high-temperature tensile property of Co-Cr-Mo alloy fabricated by electron beam melting. Acta Mater., 2014, 64: 154–168 link1

[ 6 ] Y. Chen, C. Zeng, M. Yan. Research process of Ti base functional gradient materials. Mater. Rev., 2012, 26(S1): 267–270 (in Chinese)

[ 7 ] R. Banerjee, D. Bhattacharyya, P. C. Collins, G. B. Viswanathan, H. L. Fraser. Precipitation of grain boundary a in a laser deposited compositionally graded Ti-8Al-xV alloy—An orientation microscopy study. Acta Mater., 2004, 52(2): 377–385 link1

[ 8 ] H. Sahasrabudhe, R. Harrison, C. Carpenter, A. Bandyopadhyay. Stainless steel to titanium bimetallic structure using LENSTM. Addit. Manuf., 2015, 5: 1–8 link1

[ 9 ] Y. Liang, X. Tian, Y. Zhu, J. Li, H. Wang. Compositional variation and microstructural evolution in laser additive manufactured Ti/Ti-6Al-2Zr-1Mo-1V graded structural material. Mater. Sci. Eng. A, 2014, 599: 242–246

[10] H. P. Qu, P. Li, S. Q. Zhang, A. Li, H. M. Wang. Microstructure and mechanical property of laser melting deposition (LMD) Ti/TiAl structural gradient material. Mater. Des., 2010, 31(1): 574–582 link1

[11] Z. H. Liu, D. Q. Zhang, S. L. Sing, C. K. Chua, L. E. Loh. Interfacial characterization of SLM parts in multi-material processing: Metallurgical diffusion between 316L stainless steel and C18400 copper alloy. Mater. Charact., 2014, 94: 116–125 link1

[12] N. Hrabe, T. Quinn. Effects of processing on microstructure and mechanical properties of a titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) fabricated using electron beam melting (EBM), part 1: Distance from build plate and part size. Mater. Sci. Eng. A, 2013, 573: 264–270

Related Research