DMP Monitoring as a Process Optimization Tool for Direct Metal Printing (DMP) of Ti-6Al-4V

Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) has evolved as a production technique for rapid prototyping as well as high volume precision manufacturing. In this work, DMP Monitoring, a new feature of 3D Systems’ direct metal printer, ProX® DMP 320 has been used as a tool for process parameter optimization. The effect of the variations of process parameters like layer thickness, laser power, scan speed and hatch spacing on the physical and mechanical properties of the additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V samples have been investigated. In addition to the conventional post-processing evaluation methods like Archimedes’ density, X-ray CT and tensile testing, new in-situ process monitoring tools are assessed and compared with the traditional evaluation methods.