A Comparative and Experimental Study on the Effect of Heat Treatment Cycles for PBF Ti6Al4V

Powder bed fusion (PBF) presents the highest level of technological maturity and industrialization level for metallic materials among other Additive Manufacturing technologies. The advantages of high geometrical complexity, ability to produce internal cavities, reduced lead time and buy-to-fly ratio enables a wide range of application areas from aerospace to biomedical. Laser-PBF and Electron-PBF present different limitations and opportunities while they can both build from Ti6Al4V powder. The performance of the E-PBF and L-PBF parts highly depends on the resulting microstructures and differs significantly due to various mechanisms such as preheating temperatures and processing environment. Moreover, the obtained material properties generally necessitate heat treatments for reducing residual stresses, enhancing mechanical properties and changing the microstructure. This study aims to investigate the effect of the same heat treatment cycles on the E-PBF and L-PBF microstructure evolution and microhardness by a comparative experimental work with several combinations of exposure durations, temperatures and cooling rates.