Formability of Recycled Al-10%Si-0.4%Mg Alloy Powder by Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology has advantages in manufacturing free-shape parts and simplification of manufacturing process. In order to manufacture high quality parts, it is significant to investigate the influence of not only fabrication conditions but also powder characteristics on the properties of parts. In this study, the influences of powder characteristics on the density, microstructure and tensile properties of Al-10%Si-0.4%Mg alloy fabricated by laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M) process were investigated using the virgin and recycled spherical powders and the virgin and recycled non-spherical powder. As a result, the density of the as-built specimen of spherical powder was higher than that of non-spherical powder. Moreover, the density of the as-built specimen of recycled spherical powder is almost equal to that of virgin spherical powder. On the other hand, the density of the as-built specimen of recycled non-spherical powder is lower than that of virgin non-spherical powder. The tensile properties of the as-built specimens of spherical powder were superior to those of non-spherical powder. Thus, it was revealed that high quality parts are able to be stably manufactured using spherical powder.