Laser in Metal Additive Manufacturing

The evolution of additive manufacturing (AM) techniques has had such an exponential increase especially in recent years that various and remarkable techniques have been developed for the production of metallic materials. These techniques allow to obtain products with remarkable mechanical characteristics. Therefore, the different AM techniques that employed metallic materials were analysed and their strengths and weaknesses were considered. In particular, investigations were carried out on artefacts made by Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) technique in two different metal alloys: Inconel-625 and titanium grade 2. In relation to Inconel-625, tomographic analyses were carried out for the detection of ad hoc defects, ultrasound analyses to evaluate anistropy, micrographs and tensile tests to evaluate their mechanical characteristics. The titanium grade 2 products were compared with samples made by the traditional fusion technique to assess their suitability in the dental field. The results show that artefacts made by DMLS technique have overall better features than fusion samples: the defects are less widespread and smaller, the hardness - characteristic of mechanical properties - higher.