Demonstration of a laser powder bed fusion combinatorial sample for high-throughput microstructure and indentation characterization

[Display omitted] •Ninety-six regular samples, sixty unique processes into four combinatorial samples.•Estimated five times reduction in time and cost.•Hardness was most influenced by stress-relieving and sample geometry. High-throughput experiments that use combinatorial samples with rapid measurements can be used to provide process-structure-property information at reduced time, cost, and effort. Developing these tools and methods is essential in additive manufacturing where new process-structure-property information is required on a frequent basis as advances are made in feedstock materials, additive machines, and post-processing. Here we demonstrate the design and use of combinatorial samples produced on a commercial laser powder bed fusion system to study 60 distinct process conditions of nickel superalloy 625: five laser powers and four laser scan speeds in three different conditions. Combinatorial samples were characterized using optical and electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and indentation to estimate the porosity, grain size, crystallographic texture, secondary phase precipitation, and hardness. Indentation and porosity results were compared against a regular sample. The smaller-sized regions (3 mm × 4 mm) in the combinatorial sample have a lower hardness compared to a larger regular sample (20 mm × 20 mm) with similar porosity (