Martensite steel powder used for 3D printing. Inset shows a zoomed-in view of the steel powder. Credit: Raiyan Seede/Texas
A&M University College of Engineering
Posted on 04/19/2020 3:05:46 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Martensite steel powder used for 3D printing. Inset shows a zoomed-in view of the steel powder. Credit: Raiyan Seede/Texas
A&M University College of Engineering
For millennia, metallurgists have been meticulously tweaking the ingredients of steel to enhance its properties. As a result, several variants of steel exist today; but one type, called martensitic steel, stands out from its steel cousins as stronger and more cost-effective to produce. Hence, martensitic steels naturally lend themselves to applications in the aerospace, automotive and defense industries, among others, where high-strength, lightweight parts need to be manufactured without boosting the cost.
However, for these and other applications, the metals have to be built into complex structures with minimal loss of strength and durability. Researchers from Texas A&M University, in collaboration with scientists in the Air Force Research Laboratory, have now developed guidelines that allow 3-D printing of martensitic steels into very sturdy, defect-free objects of nearly any shape.
"Strong and tough steels have tremendous applications but the strongest ones are usually expensive—the one exception being martensitic steels that are relatively inexpensive, costing less than a dollar per pound," said Dr. Ibrahim Karaman, Chevron Professor I and head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "We have developed a framework so that 3-D printing of these hard steels is possible into any desired geometry and the final object will be virtually defect-free."
Although the procedure developed was initially for martensitic steels, researchers from the Texas A&M said they have made their guidelines general enough so that the same 3-D printing pipeline can be used to build intricate objects from other metals and alloys as well.
The findings of the study were reported in the December issue of the journal Acta Materialia.
Steels are made of iron and a small quantity of other elements, including carbon. Martensite steels are formed when steels are heated to extremely high temperatures and then rapidly cooled. The sudden cooling unnaturally confines carbon atoms within iron crystals, giving martensitic steel its signature strength.
To have diverse applications, martensitic steels, particularly a type called low-alloy martensitic steels, need to be assembled into objects of different shapes and sizes depending on a particular application. That's when additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3-D printing, provides a practical solution. Using this technology, complex items can be built layer by layer by heating and melting a single layer of metal powder along a pattern with a sharp laser beam. Each of these layers joined and stacked creates the final 3-D-printed object.
However, 3-D printing martensitic steels using lasers can introduce unintended defects in the form of pores within the material.
"Porosities are tiny holes that can sharply reduce the strength of the final 3-D-printed object, even if the raw material used for the 3-D printing is very strong," said Karaman. "To find practical applications for the new martensitic steel, we needed to go back to the drawing board and investigate which laser settings could prevent these defects."
For their experiments, Karaman and the Texas A&M team first chose an existing mathematical model inspired from welding to predict how a single layer of martensitic steel powder would melt for different settings for laser speed and power. By comparing the type and number of defects they observed in a single track of melted powder with the model's predictions, they were able to change their existing framework slightly so that subsequent predictions improved.
After a few such iterations, their framework could correctly forecast, without needing additional experiments, if a new, untested set of laser settings would lead to defects in the martensitic steel. The researchers said this procedure is more time-efficient.
"Testing the entire range of laser setting possibilities to evaluate which ones may lead to defects is extremely time-consuming, and at times, even impractical," said Raiyan Seede, a graduate student in the College of Engineering and the primary author of the study. "By combining experiments and modeling, we were able to develop a simple, quick, step-by-step procedure that can be used to determine which setting would work best for 3-D printing of martensitic steels."
Seede also noted that although their guidelines were developed to ensure that martensitic steels can be printed devoid of deformities, their framework can be used to print with any other metal. He said this expanded application is because their framework can be adapted to match the observations from single-track experiments for any given metal.
"Although we started with a focus on 3-D printing of martensitic steels, we have since created a more universal printing pipeline," said Karaman. "Also, our guidelines simplify the art of 3-D printing metals so that the final product is without porosities, which is an important development for all type of metal additive manufacturing industries that make parts as simple as screws to more complex ones like landing gears, gearboxes or turbines."
Follow up
Get ready to see a lot more older vehicles back out on the road as shops will be able to precision manufacture parts for older cars.
Political power grows out of the nozzle of a 3-D Printer.
Why did they print screw heads where the screws are supposed to go?
Oh, man, and you think printer cartridges are expensive now...
“Get ready to see a lot more older vehicles back out on the road as shops will be able to precision manufacture parts for older cars.”
That’s exactly my business plan. Getting ready to produce some finished products now, they’ve been in R&D.
If you could make vintage Willys and AMC parts better, I would be a good customer.
Those are temporary fillers that support the upper surface of the hole.
What about grain structure? Grain growth?
These aren’t that expensive, in fact, they’re a steel...
Those are supports for the top side of the holes. There’s still some finishing needed for the final net shape for that generation of printers (it’s an older image).
Nice. However I’m pretty sure that’s machined from billet, not 3-D printed.
I'm certain you are wrong, go to Solid Concept's web site and see for yourself.
Metal 3-D printing is now making many near net METAL parts.
StrataSys is one vendor.
Desktop Metal is an other.
NASA and Space-X are 3-d printing rocket engines.
Someone printed a complete all metal M1911 some 7 years ago. Eager to see the equipment costs drop from ~$1M to garage-friendly.
With a maximum work envelope of 19' x 4' x 4' x 8’ (L x W x H x D, or round parts up to 96” diameter), the EBAM® 300 Series by Sciaky offers the largest build platform of any metal 3d printer commercially available.
Designed to additively manufacture large-scale parts and prototypes from high-value metals like titanium, tantalum, Inconel, niobium, and other alloys, the EBAM300 is the only 3D printer on the market that has produced a metal structure exceeding 10 feet in length.
As the printer uses a laser and essentially is a sintering process, this could lead to inexpensive metal printers.
If these printers come down to even $20,000 each... Wow.
It is only $50K, from Australia, and has a chamber 8"x8"x10", a pretty useful size.
No joke. They built to withstand a pistol bullet (and demonstrate it) all on a 3D printer.
I have recently gotten into 3D printing, it is a blast, though somewhat frustrating at times. I have been using a cheap, Chinese Creality Ender-3 printer, and I got a lemon. after months of struggling, I finally got the bugs ironed out, but it served its purpose.
I didn't want to be one of those people who spends all this money on something and never uses it, so I bought this cheap printer for $175, and while I had no end of trouble with it, it was like owning my first car. I knew nothing about cars, but after owning a notoriously unreliable MG Midget, I learned all about cars.
Same with this printer. So I purchased a new one a couple weeks ago, a pretty expensive one, and purchased some real 3D software.
When I hadn't heard back a week after ordering it, I sent a polite email and left a call inquiring about the status. I fully understand with everything going on there will be delays, I just wanted to ensure the order went through.
The CEO personally called me back to give me an update, and the next morning, emailed me a picture of my printer being assembled...:)
(he said mine was the one on the left...:)
I like that. One of the reasons I chose the company was because the product was American Made, and the support experiences sounded like this call from the CEO-great customer service comes from the top down.
Yeah! Good luck!
I had heard some years back that 3D printing was going to revolutionize industry from manufacturing to building houses.
I read an interesting article that predicted that many parts will not be built and shipped in the future...they will be printed at the destination-even in your house.
I saw a cool video that showed how to use 3D printing to create a mold-I find this entire endeavor very exciting.
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