Additive manufacturing of TiC-based cermet with stainless steel as a binder material

In this work, TiC-based cermet was fabricated via Selective Laser Melting using chromium ferritic steel as a binder material. Due to their brittle characteristics, cermets are challenging materials to be fabricated by additive manufacturing. Taking into account health care, economic importance, and supply risks, toxic metals such as Ni, Co, and W should be reduced or replaced with other green-based binder metals. Non-toxic materials such as TiC as the matrix and Fe-based alloys as the binder material could be a possible solution is to replace these toxic materials based cermets. The laser pulse shaping technique has been adapted for the fabrication of crack-free cermet with different laser-processed parameters. By shaping the laser pulses with different laser cycles, laser energy is delivered to a single layer in the form of controlled and defined pulses. This controlled delivery of energy can be used to regulate the melt pool characteristics including the temperature of the melt pool. The pulse shaping technique helps to reduce or eliminate the process defects such as cracks making it the most suitable method for the fabrication of TiC-Fe-based cermets. The laser process parameters that influence the microstructure morphology and mechanical properties such as hardness and fracture toughness have been investigated in detail. The results pave the way for the fabrication of novel cermets without cracks using selective laser melting.