Defect structure process maps for laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing

Accurate detection, characterization, and prediction of defects has great potential for immediate impact in the production of fully-dense and defect free metal additive manufacturing (AM) builds. Accordingly, this paper presents Defect Structure Process Maps (DSPMs) as a means of quantifying the role of porosity as an exemplary defect structure in powder bed printed materials. Synchrotron-based micro-computed tomography (μSXCT) was used to demonstrate that metal AM defects follow predictable trends within processing parameter space for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) materials. Ti-6Al-4 V test blocks were fabricated on an EOS M290 utilizing variations in laser power, scan velocity, and hatch spacing. In general, characteristic under-melting or lack-of-fusion defects were discovered in the low laser power, high scan velocity region of process space via μSXCT. These defects were associated with insufficient overlap between adjacent melt tracks and can be avoided through the application of a lack-of-fusion criterion using melt pool geometric modeling. Large-scale keyhole defects were also successfully mitigated for estimated melt pool morphologies associated with shallow keyhole front wall angles. Process variable selections resulting in deep keyholes, i.e., high laser power and low scan velocity, exhibit a substantial increase of spherical porosity as compared to the nominal (manufacturer recommended) processing parameters for Ti-6Al-4 V. Defects within fully-dense process space were also discovered, and are associated with gas porosity transfer to the AM test blocks during the laser-powder interaction. Overall, this work points to the fact that large-scale defects in LPBF materials can be successfully predicted and thus mitigated/minimized via appropriate selection of processing parameters.