Impact of heating rate during exposure of laser molten parts on the processing window of PA12 powder

The additive component manufacturing by selective beam melting of thermoplastic polymer powders can be divided essentially into the following sub-processes: Powder coating, exposure and material consolidation. The mechanical and geometrical properties of a part produced by the selective melting of polymer powders depend to a large extent on these sub-processes. To increase process repeatability basic knowledge about the mutual interactions within the sub-process is of major interest. In the following article the exposure process is focused. Therefore the time dependent energy input into the powder bed is analyzed in its impact on the usable processing window of PA12 powder. Thereby parameters like surface temperature, density and strength of molten layers as well as complex body specimens are quantified for varying exposure heating rates. Therefore methods of statistical design of experiments are used. Due to these investigations the derivation of new, the time dependent material behavior of polymers fitting processing strategies is possible. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.