Electron beam melting (EBM) is a powder-bed fusion process within the group of additive manufacturing (AM) technology that is used to fabricate high performance metallic parts. Nickel-Iron base superalloys, such as Alloy 718, are subjected to successive heating and cooling at temperatures in excess of 800 °C during the EBM process. Characterization of the dendritic structure, carbides, Laves and δ-phase were of particular interest in this study. These successive thermal cycles influence the microstructure of the material resulting in a heterogeneous structure, especially in the building direction. Hence, the aim of this study was to gain increased fundamental understanding of the relationship between the processing history and the microstructure formed within a single layer. Different numbers of tracks with equal heights were for this purpose produced, varying from one to ten tracks. All tracks used the same process parameters regardless of number and/or position. Microstructure characteristics (sub-grain structure, grain structure and phases) were analyzed by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy disperse spectroscopy and electron backscatter diffraction. The direction of dendrites changed in the overlap zones within the tracks due to re-melting of material in the overlap zone. The primary dendrite arm spacings slightly increased along multi-tracks owing to a slight decrease in cooling rate by addition of the next tracks. Epitaxial growth of grains were observed in all samples due to partial re-melting of grains in previous layers and surface nucleation was also found to occur in all tracks.

Successive thermal cycling (STC) during multi-track and multi-layer manufacturing of Alloy 718 using electron beam melting (EBM) process leads to a microstructure with a high degree of complexity. In the present study, a detailed microstructural study of EBM-manufactured Alloy 718 was conducted by producing samples in shapes from one single track and single wall to 3D samples with maximum 10 longitudinal tracks and 50 vertical layers. The relationship between STC, solidification microstructure, interdendritic segregation, phase precipitation (MC, δ-phase), and hardness was investigated. Cooling rates (liquid-to-solid and solid-to-solid state) was estimated by measuring primary dendrite arm spacing (PDAS) and showed an increased cooling rate at the bottom compared to the top of the multi-layer samples. Thus, microstructure gradient was identified along the build direction. Moreover, extensive formation of solidification micro-constituents including MC-type carbides, induced by micro-segregation, was observed in all the samples. The electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) technique showed a high textured structure in 〈001〉 direction with a few grains misoriented at the surface of all samples. Finer microstructure and possibility of more γ″ phase precipitation at the bottom of the samples resulted in slightly higher (~11%) hardness values compared to top of the samples. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Effects of build layout and orientation consisting of (a) height from the build plate (Z-axis), (b) distance between samples, and (c) location in the build plate (X-Y plane) on porosity, NbC fraction, and hardness in electron beam melted (EBM) Alloy 718 were studied. The as-built samples predominantly showed columnar structure with strong ˂001˃ crystallographic orientation parallel to the build direction, as well as NbC and ÎŽ-phase in inter-dendrites and grain boundaries. These microstructural characteristics were correlated with the thermal history, specifically cooling rate, resulted from the build layout and orientation parameters. The hardness and NbC fraction of the samples increased around 6% and 116%, respectively, as the height increased from 2 to 45 mm. Moreover, by increasing the height, formation of ÎŽ-phase was also enhanced associated with lower cooling rate in the samples built with a greater distance from the build plate. However, the porosity fraction was unaffected. Increasing the sample gap from 2 to 10 mm did not change the NbC fraction and hardness; however, the porosity fraction increased by 94%. The sample location in the build chamber influenced the porosity fraction, particularly in interior and exterior areas of the build plate. The hardness and NbC fraction were not dependent on the sample location in the build chamber. © 2018, The Author(s).

Electron beam-powder bed fusion (EB-PBF), a high-temperature additive manufacturing (AM) technique, shows great promise in the production of high-quality metallic parts in different applications such as the aerospace industry. To achieve a higher build efficiency, it is ideal to build multiple parts together with as low spacing as possible between the respective parts. In the EB-PBF technique, there are many unknown variations in microstructural characteristics and functional performance that could be induced as a result of the location of the parts on the build plate, gaps between the parts and part geometry, etc. In the present study, the variations in the microstructure and corrosion performance as a function of the parts location on the build plate in the EB-PBF process were investigated. The microstructural features were correlated with the thermal history of the samples built in different locations on the build plate, including exterior (the outermost), middle (between the outermost and innermost), and interior (the innermost) regions. The cubic coupons located in the exterior regions showed increased level (~ 20 %) of defects (mainly in the form of shrinkage pores) and lower level (~ 30-35 %) of Nb-rich phase fraction due to their higher cooling rates compared to the interior and middle samples. Electrochemical investigations showed that the location indirectly had a substantial influence on the corrosion behavior, verified by a significant increase in polarization resistance (Rp) from the exterior (2.1 ± 0.3 kΩ.cm2) to interior regions (39.2 ± 4.1 kΩ.cm2). © 2020, The Author(s).

Electron beam melting-powder bed fusion (EBM-PBF) is an additive manufacturing process, which is able to produce parts in layer-by-layer fashion from a 3D model data. Currently application of this technology in parts manufacturing with high geometrical complexity has acquired growing interest in industry. To recommend the EBM process into industry for manufacturing parts, improved mechanical properties of final part must be obtained. Such properties highly depend on individual single melted track and single layer. In EBM, interactions between the electron beam, powder, and solid underlying layer affect the geometrical (e.g., re-melt depth, track width, contact angle, and track height) and microstructural (e.g., grain structure, and primary dendrite arm spacing) characteristics of the melted tracks. The core of the present research was to explore the influence of linear energy input parameters in terms of beam scanning speed, beam current as well as focus offset and their interactions on the geometry and microstructure of EBM-manufactured single tracks of Alloy 718. Increased scanning speed led to lower linear energy input values (<0.9 J/mm) in an specific range of the focus offset (0–10 mA) which resulted in instability, and discontinuity of the single tracks as well as balling effect. Decreasing the scanning speed and increasing the beam current resulted in higher melt pool depth and width. By statistical evaluations, the most influencing parameters on the geometrical features were primarily the scanning speed, and secondly the beam current. Primary dendrite arm spacing (PDAS) slightly decreased by increasing the scanning speed using lower beam current values as the linear energy input decreased. By increasing the linear energy input, the chance of more equiaxed grain formation was high, however, at lower linear energy input, mainly columnar grains were observed. The lower focus offset values resulted in more uniform grains along the 〈001〉 crystallographic direction. © 2018 Elsevier Inc. 

Additive manufacturing (AM) processes are being frequently used in industry as they allow the manufacture ofcomplex parts with reduced lead times. Electron beam-powder bed fusion (EB-PBF) as an AM technology isknown for its near-net-shape production capacity with low residual stress. However, the surface quality andgeometrical accuracy of the manufactured parts are major obstacles for the wider industrial adoption of thistechnology, especially when enhanced mechanical performance is taken into consideration. Identifying theorigins of surface features such as satellite particles and sharp valleys on the parts manufactured by EB-PBF isimportant for a better understanding of the process and its capability. Moreover, understanding the influence ofthe contour melting strategy, by altering process parameters, on the surface roughness of the parts and thenumber of near-surface defects is highly critical. In this study, processing parameters of the EB-PBF techniquesuch as scanning speed, beam current, focus offset, and number of contours (one or two) with the linear meltingstrategy were investigated. A sample manufactured using Arcam-recommended process parameters (threecontours with the spot melting strategy) was used as a reference. For the samples with one contour, the scanningspeed had the greatest effect on the arithmetical mean height (Sa), and for the samples with two contours, thebeam current and focus offset had the greatest effect. For the samples with two contours, a lower focus offset andlower scan speed (at a higher beam current) resulted in a lower Sa; however, increasing the scan speed for thesamples with one contour decreased Sa. In general, the samples with two contours provided a lower Sa (∼22 %)but with slightly higher porosity (∼8 %) compared to the samples with one contour. Fewer defects were detected with a lower scanning speed and higher beam current. The number of defects and the Sa value for thesamples with two contours manufactured using the linear melting strategy were ∼85 % and 16 %, respectively,lower than those of the reference samples manufactured using the spot melting strategy.