Survey of Materials and Material Issues in Rapid Manufacturing by SLS/SLM

The paper gives a survey of actual materials that can be processed by Selective Laser Sintering and Selective Laser Melting for rapid manufacturing purposes. It mainly focusses on polymers, but also surveys the various metals that can be processed. It describes the various binding mechanisms that can be invoked and the resulting material properties and structures that can be obtained. For polymers, distinction is made between semi-crystalline polymers, amorphous polymers, de-bindable polymers, reinforced polymers, elastomeric polymers, polymer blends and thermosetting polymers. For metals, it looks at single component metals, alloys and metal composites.