Increasing Process Speed in the Laser Melting Process of Ti6Al4V and the Reduction of Pores During Hot Isostatic Pressing

Additive manufacturing of titanium alloys has gained intensive attraction from industry and academia. Moreover, for additively fabricated parts consisting of Ti6Al4V, hot isostatic pressing (HIP), is widely used as a post treatment in order to increase the relative density of the built parts. However, one aspect which has rarely been addressed so far, is the increase of process speed, accompanied by a reduced relative density in the as-built condition and a subsequent hot isostatic pressing process to achieve the desired dense material. The approach here is to use the standard process route as described, but intentionally increase the process speed and accept a certain value of porosity. The focal objective of this study is the identification of a parameter-set with the highest potential for an increase of process speed and subsequently reduce the internal defects during the hot isostatic pressing process to achieve completely dense components.