Determination of a process window with consideration of effective layer thickness in SLM process

Selective laser melting (SLM) process based on metallic powders has been broadly adopted for its higher accuracy. In the SLM process, the building of a process window is a fundamental work for fabricating a full-dense part for a new material. Single-track test (STT) has been widely used due to its simplicity. Due to the different environmental conditions of between STTs and a real fabrication, stable process parameters obtained from the STTs cannot ensure successful fabrication. To resolve the problem, this paper proposes a new method to build a process window based on multi-layered fabrication. From the comparison between existing and proposed method, it is concluded that the proposed method can stably build a process window for a hard-processed material and provide more information for a geometrically accurate fabrication and the surface quality of a fabricated part.