High performance aluminium powder for additive manufacturing

Conventional high strength aluminium alloys are not designed for SLM. Many issues happen during the SLM process and the lose their mechanical properties. Existing Aluminium powder alloys for SLM on the market suffer from:
- limited mechanical performance
- low build rates
- need of a conventional heat treatment that induces distortions
Therefore, the manufacturing cost is high and the parts have a high weight. Available titanium alloys on the other hand have a higher manufacturing cost and a high density that increases the weight of the part when stiffness is needed. As selective laser melting is becoming a competitive process for the production of lightweight parts the need for high performance aluminium alloys for SLM is increasing.

We have developed a high performance Aluminium alloy dedicated for the SLM (Selective Laser Melting) process. The SLM parts built with our new powder alloy have a high mechanical performance both at room temperature and up to 250°C. The material reaches the highest yield strength of 500 MPa without conventional heat treatment that includes a quench. A wide process window can be used on a EOS M290 machine to obtain porosities below 0.1% which makes the process very robust. The highest build rate (> 40 cm3/h) makes the manufacturing cost competitive. The product allows to further reduce weight and costs of parts that are already printed with Al or Ti alloys. The combination of the design freedom of SLM with the high strength lightweight material allows to design and produce a wider range high performance parts.