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Multi-material metal additive manufacturing: current state, challenges, and opportunities

To increase performance of next generation components in relevant industries such as aerospace, both geometric and material design freedom are necessary. As a consequence, metal multi-material additive manufacturing has risen in relevance in recent years allowing for engineers to control not only where a material is deposited, but which material is deposited when 3D printing.

In this presentation, the current technology readiness level of multi-material AM in metal additive processes such as laser powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition, and binder jetting will be presented to provide an industry overview. When joining dissimilar metals, processing parameters need to be dynamically changed due to spatially varying thermal properties. The resulting liquid metal mixing can lead to defective parts with cracking and porosity. Methods for surpassing this effect through parameter optimization and use of transitional compositions ensuring a defect-free joint will be discussed. Lastly, a case study will be presented in the form of printing of Inconel (high temp Ni-based superalloy) – GRCop42 (Cu-based high conductivity alloy) joints using both laser powder bed fusion and laser directed energy deposition for rocket nozzle applications.

The speaker is:
Jakub Preis, PhD Researcher, Oregon State University

Tags

  • Research and development (R&D)