Properties of test coupons fabricated by selective laser melting

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is a popular and promising Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique as it can produce parts with complex internal features with part density close to 100%. However, unprocessed raw SLM fabricated parts have surface roughness issues and the mechanical properties of raw SLM parts without heat treatment are not ideal. The material used to address some of these issues in this research is an Aluminum alloy, AlSi₁₀Mg - a strong and light weight metal. The SLM machine engaged for the test coupons fabrication is M2 Cusing from Concept Laser, Germany, which uses a diode pumped Yb-Fibre laser (Ytterbium-doped fibre lasers) with an effective output power of 200W. It is found that SLM fabricated parts with and without sandblasting shows up to 80% difference in surface roughness values. Also, the tensile test experiments of raw untreated SLM parts carried out at room temperature and at high temperature (200°C) show superior result compared with heat treated casted parts. Other properties such as hardness and density (porosity) are found to be better than heat treated cast parts as well.