Titanium Alloy Plate Fabrication by Sputter-less Selective Laser Melting

We demonstrated that a Ti-6Al-4V (Ti64) plate, which is clinically applied for artificial bone in human body because of their light and biocompatibility, was fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) in vacuum. The chamber's pressure was set to 1.0×10-2 Pa to prevent the Ti64 powder from oxidizing. The base-plate of the powder bed was vertically dropped in determined steps, and Ti64 powder supplied from the powder feeder was then smoothed by a roller on top of the powder bed. The single-mode fiber laser irradiated through 3-axis Galvano mirror and melted the powder to make a molten pool in order to form 2D metallic structures. In order to investigate the laser melting and solidification dynamics, a process of Ti64 plate fabrication was captured by high speed video camera. It was also determined that crystal orientation was evaluated with X-ray diffraction (XRD). From XRD analysis, it was recorded from the powder peaks of α (1011), α (0002), α (1010), and α (1012) that the crystal orientation is composed mainly of martensitic alpha by XRD analysis. Diffraction peaks corresponding to β (110) were detected in vacuum SLM processed samples.