Porosity of LMD manufactured parts analyzed by Archimedes method and CT

Abstract

Abstract Pores in additive manufactured metal parts occur due to different reasons and affect the part quality negatively. Few investigations on the origins of porosity are available, especially for Ni-based super alloys. This paper presents a new study to examine the influence of common processing parameters on the formation of pores in parts built by laser metal deposition using Inconel 718 powder. Further, a comparison between the computed tomography (CT) and the Archimedes method was made. The investigation shows that CT is able to identify different kinds of pores and to give further information about their distribution. The identification of some pores as well as their shape can be dependent on the parameter setting of the analysis tool. Due to limited measurement resolution, CT is not able to identify correctly pores with diameters smaller than 0.1 mm, which leads to a false decrease in overall porosity. The applied Archimedes method is unable to differentiate between gas porosity and other kinds of holes like internal cracks or lack of fusion, but it delivered a proper value for overall porosity. The method was able to provide suitable data for the statistical evaluation with design of experiments, which revealed significant parameters on the formation of pores in LMD.