Basics of Metal Additive Manufacturing

This chapter helps the students to understand the main additive manufacturing (AM) technologies used for metal fabrication and advantages and limitations of each technology. It introduces the main metal AM technologies: powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition, and binder jetting, and sheds some light on sheet lamination, material extrusion, and material jetting processes. Metal AM is very different from most conventional techniques in terms of thermodynamics and solidification rate. All AM process parameters can be divided into three categories: input parameters, process physics, and output parameters. There are several techniques used to produce powder particles for different industries, including AM. These techniques are: water atomization, gas atomization, plasma atomization, and centrifugal atomization. Powders are the predominant form of material used in most AM systems. The weldability of an alloy is a good indicator of its compatibility with AM processes.