Property characterization of 316L parts made by selective laser melting

Abstract

316L stainless steel is a type of stainless steel that is commonly used nowadays, from watches to marine and architectural applications. These days, people are starting to explore the idea of using 3-dimensional (3D) printing technology to produce parts for their design as 3D printing technology enables the designer to design products with shapes that used to be difficult or impossible to produce through other manufacturing processes. In designing parts to be used as a structure, fatigue life is an important component of the design as affects the useful life of the product and could also affect the safety of users. In certain industries, such as in the marine industry, the corrosive environment of the marine industry would corrode the product, hence, reducing its fatigue life.

This report is regarding the corrosion testing of 3D printed stainless steel. In this report, experiments are conducted using printed samples of 20 µm, 40 µm, 60µm and 80 µm powder size. Steps and methods used to prepare the samples for the hardness and corrosion test, and how the porosity of the sample is determined will be explained.

After doing the hardness and porosity test, powder size of 20 µm gives the best overall results, and hence, corrosion test was conducted using the optimal powder size of 20 µm. For the corrosion test, it was conducted comparing the 2 different printing orientation, which are the vertically and horizontally printed orientation. After the corrosion test, it was found that the vertical printing orientation has the better corrosion resistance between the 2 printing orientation.