Distortion Compensation of IN 625 Parts Manufactured by Selective Laser Melting

Additive manufactured parts by powder bed fusion methods are often experiencing dimensional distortions caused by thermal stress. In order to minimize the thermal stress induced distortions a compensation of CAD models should be performed. The present study was focused on distortion compensation of IN 625 parts manufactured by SLM. Finite element analysis was used to compensate the parts CAD design. A total number of eight parts were manufactured from IN 625 superalloy, four parts were manufactured based on the initial model and four were manufactured using the compensated models. Based on the 3D scans performed after manufacturing it was determined that for simple geometries the compensation ensured an improvement between 41-57% while in case of complex geometries a lower improvement degree was registered. Overall, based on the results obtained it was concluded that thermo-structural simulation can be applied to compensate the designs used for additive manufactured parts.