Acta Metallurgica Sinica (English Letters) ›› 2004, Vol. 17 ›› Issue (5): 694-704 .

• Research Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

IGNITING SHS BY LASER AND ITS APPLICATION TO SELECTIVE LASER SINTERING OF METALLTC POWDER MATERIAL

Y.S.Shi, S.C.Chen, X.L.Lu, S.H.Huang   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Plastic Forming Simulation and Die&Mould Technology,School of Material Science and Engineering,Huazhong University of Science and Technology,Wuhan430074,China
  • Received:1900-01-01 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2004-10-25 Published:2009-10-10
  • Contact: Y.S.Shi

Abstract: How to directly fabricate metallic functional parts with selective laser sintering (SLS) process is a potential technique that scientists are researching. Existent problems during directly fabricating metal part by use of SIS are analyzed. For the sake of solving the problems, a new idea of adding self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) material into metallic powder material to form new type of SIS metallic powder material is put forward. This powder material can release controllable amount of heat during its interaction with the laser beam energy to reduce the requirement to laser power during directly sintering metallic part, to prolong the time of metallic liquid phase existing, and to improve the intensity and accuracy of SIS part. For this reason, SHS material's interaction with the CO2 laser beam energy is researched, which proves that CO2 laser beam energy may instantly ignite SHS reaction. On the basis of the above-mentioned researches, the effect of sintering the metal powder material mixing SHS material with CO2 laser is also researched,which shows: there is an optimal blending ratio of various material in the new metallic powder material. Under the optimal blending ratio and SIS process parameters, this new metallic powder material can indeed release amount of heat and SHS reaction may be controlled within the laser sintering. This research result makes it possible that the metallic part is directly sintered with small CO2 laser (less than 50W), which may greatly reduce the volume, cost and running expenditure of SIS machine, be propitious to application.

Key words: selective laser sintering (SLS), self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS)