Comparison of LPBF-manufactured and rolled tensile test samples made of 17-4PH

Abstract

Abstract In recent years additive manufacturing techniques for metals became more and more enhanced and a great variety of processable materials are available. Nevertheless, the quality of 3D-printed components is often not obvious, and, depending on the material, it is not known whether they are as resilient as conventionally manufactured parts. In this paper rolled tensile test samples made of 17-4PH are compared with additively manufactured ones. For this purpose, they were printed by Laser Powder Bed Fusion in three different orientations, 0°, 45°, and 90°, and subsequently tensile tested. The presented results contain mesoscopic images of the fracture surfaces, as well as an analysis of the metallographic microstructure. Further details about the measured hardness, the phase diagrams as well as an optimized heat treatment are described in detail. It is shown that specifically the heat treated specimens with a 45° orientation reaches the highest ultimate tensile stress, but possess a low ductility in comparison to the conventional components.