Effect of Powder Particle Size on the Fabrication of Ti-6Al-4V using Direct Laser Metal Deposition from Elemental Powder Mixture

Direct Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) was used to fabricate thin-wall Ti-6Al-4V using the powder mixture of Ti-6 wt.%Al-4 wt.%V. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical microscopy (OM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) were employed to examine the chemical composition and microstructure of the as-deposited sections. Vickers hardness tests were then applied to characterize the mechanical properties of the deposit samples which were fabricated using pre-mixed elemental powders. The EDS line scans indicated that the chemical composition of the samples was homogenous across the deposit. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used for the phase identification. After significant analysis, some differences were observed among two sets of deposit samples which varied in the particle size of the mixing Ti-6wt.%Al-4wt.%V powder. It could be found that the set with similar particle number for Ti, Al and V powder made composition much more stable and could easily get industry qualified Ti-6Al-4V components.