Selective Laser Melting Technology and Manufacturing of Accurate Thin Structures

This paper deals with finding the building parameters for manufacturing of fine structures with regard to their size precision and structural consistency. Practical use of these structures can be found in areas such as microelectronics, fine mechanics and automotive. Very fine structures with thickness lower than 0.3 mm are very hard to be manufactured due to the limitations of Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology. These limitations lie in building parameters including mean size and shape of the powder particles, diameter of laser spot and scanning speed. Practical part of the work consists of printing the testing matrices from AlSi12 material with different building parameters for each element. Final products are then evaluated using scanning electron microscope in order to verify final size and structural properties of the specimens. Thanks to these tests, it was possible to find actual border of the technology for given type of powder. Structure with minimal thickness and sufficient strength was found to be 0.21 mm. Moreover, the method for finding parameters for manufacturing of fine structures is applicable for other types of materials.