The Effect of Processing Parameter on Zirconium Modified Al-Cu-Mg Alloys Fabricated by Selective Laser Melting

The newly designed alloy compositions for selective laser melting (SLM) have aroused great interest. In this study, zirconium modified Al-Cu-Mg alloys were fabricated by SLM. Results show that crack-free samples with relative density of nearly 100% were obtained by optimizing the processing parameters. With the increase of scanning speed, the relative density decreases due to insufficient energy input. In addition, the microstructure transforms from homogeneous to bio-modal, the reason is the unstable flows caused by the high scanning speed. The small hatching space will provide more energy input and preheat, leading to the coarse surface.