Additive manufacturing continues to gain increasing importance for the production of technical products. Powder-bed additive manufacturing that uses a laser heat source is most widely used and has been applied to gold and platinum alloys in the past. Material properties such as porosity and surface roughness play an important role in final part quality. This paper will describe the effect of different materials’ properties and process parameters on the results obtained with additive manufacturing. The different materials include steel, titanium, copper, gold and platinum alloys, which have a wide range of important properties such as reflectivity, surface tension of the liquid, and thermal conductivity. Tests were done using many process parameters employing machines that are currently used in the jewelry industry by different manufacturers. The paper will promote understanding of the correlation of machine type, process parameters and material properties in order to improve the final quality of additively manufactured parts.

Author: Franz Held