Porosity formation in selective laser melting of spodumene

Abstract

Additive manufacturing of spodumene was carried out using selective laser melting to study the porosity formed in the printed parts. Parts were printed with similar power, scan velocity, and hatch spacing but with different layer thicknesses. To study the porosities formed in the parts, micro-computerised tomography was utilize to obtain x-ray images of the printed parts. The results showed that the pores formed randomly in the core throughout the samples printed with layer thickness of 50 μm. However, as the layer thickness increases, pores were seen to form along the edges near the surfaces of the parts. In addition, the size of the pores reduced and heattreatment has negligible effect of reducing the porosity.