Improving property consistency and reliability for polyamide processed using powder bed fusion

Abstract An historic obstacle to widespread application of polymer powder bed fusion in structural applications is the reliability, consistency and repeatability of part service properties between builds. This is discussed in the context of data from a service bureau representing over 80,000 ASTM D638 tension tests of additive manufactured laser sintered polyamide 11. It is shown that the usual method for relating process parameters to part properties, the energy density, is valid when considering part service strength but is not adequate when considering part ductility. A solution approach is presented based on thermal modeling during the build process.