Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato
Abstract
3-D metal printing has the potential to solve problems in the medical, prototyping, automotive, aerospace, defense, and other engineering industries. To reach the potential of any manufacturing process, the final product’s material characteristics and how the process affects those characteristics must be understood to meet the demands of industrial applications. There is a gap in standard testing information regarding metal based 3-D metal printing processes. The purpose of this research is to fill that gap of valuable information for this manufacturing process, so that its principles can be used to design better products. Fundamental tensile and compression tests were executed using American Society for Testing and Materials standard methods on printed parts whose process variables were adjusted independently. Heater power temperature per metal powder layer, layer thickness, and printing orientation of the part were changed to understand how varying the process affects the strength when elongated or compressed. These tests and factors were setup using a design of experiments method to reduce the fundamental research’s complexity and waste while retaining quality statistical results. Our research shows a strong interaction between the process variables and the resulting mechanical properties. This data can be utilized to design better quality parts
