Laser powder bed fusion of Ti15Mo

Ti15Mo is a generic alloy that has been around for a long time, however, it could not attain widespread applications compared to the Ti6Al4V due to the inherent limitations of the conventional methods of manufacturing the alloy. Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) an additive manufacturing technology was used to determine the possibility of manufacturing the Ti15Mo alloy with improved mechanical properties for widespread applications. 85 wt% of Ti was mechanically mixed with 15 wt% Mo and in situ alloyed by the laser beam. The laser beam could not melt the Mo powder particles completely due to the thermophysical differences between the elemental powders. The ultimate tensile strength and the microhardness results obtained for the LPBF Ti15Mo samples were within the range of Ti15Mo alloy manufactured by conventional methods, which indicated that LPBF technology could be used to in situ alloy different elemental powders with mechanical properties comparable to samples manufactured using the conventional methods. The ductility of the LPBF Ti15Mo samples was lower than samples manufactured using conventional methods. The low ductility value was attributed to the high rate of heating and cooling simultaneously by the LPBF process.