Material qualification
for Laser Powder Bed Fusion
Material qualification
The world's fastest qualification
With over 100 years of experience in processing more than 400 different materials for the production of forged components, we are familiar with the challenges our end customers face with regard to application-specific material properties.
We at Rosswag Engineering have therefore set ourselves the goal of closing the material gap between metal 3D printing and conventional manufacturing processes. We are currently working on the qualification of new materials in dozens of industrial and research projects. We can offer our customers both well-known alloys such as the heat-treatable steel 42CrMo4 and newly developed materials such as the high-strength maraging tool steel Specialis® for the production of components for specific applications.
Comparison of materials ready for series production
The number of available and qualified materials for industrial metal 3D printing is comparatively low. However, in order to further industrialize the technology, the market needs a larger selection of materials to enable the functional added value of additive manufacturing processes for more applications across industries.
Material qualification
Technology Readiness Level
The classification according to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) helps to transparently describe the qualification status of a material in communication. With the initial qualification, initial grinding results and mechanical properties, the basic processability of the material can be demonstrated and TRL 3 is reached. Based on this, further qualification can be driven forward in the following two phases until the material is ready for series production. In TRL 4-6 "Prototyping and Validation", application-specific optimizations and validations of the desired process chain are carried out. In the final phase, "Serial Production", the material and process are finally optimized with extensive statistics for later series applications and application-specific certifications for the material, the process and the component design can be tackled.
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Initial qualification
The hurdle for companies to have new materials qualified for additive manufacturing is usually very high. The metal powder must first be produced in the required quality by a supplier. Another partner is then required to process the material on an LPBF system and identify suitable process and machine parameters. Samples and test specimens are often analyzed and tested by a third partner. The countless interfaces lead to a high financial risk and a lengthy development project without a clear structure and objective.
At Rosswag Engineering, it is possible to atomize a new material into metal powder, carry out LPBF parameter studies and then determine the initial results regarding microstructure and mechanical properties in the laboratory in less than 4 weeks thanks to the company's internal and integrated process chain. According to the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) developed by NASA, the initial qualification is in the area of proof of functional capability (Level 3).
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Validation & prototyping
Once the basic process capability of the material has been proven, the overall process is optimized to meet the application-specific requirements of the possible end applications. On the one hand, the focus is on post-processing, from heat treatment to machining and suitable surface finishing. On the other hand, initial prototypes and test specimens are tested in further test series with regard to the application-specific requirements.
Transferability to other LPBF systems is also an important building block in the area of Technology Readiness Level 4-6. The aim is to achieve machine-independent processability of the specified metal powder on comparable production systems by transferring the most important machine parameters and subsequent fine-tuning to the respective system characteristics.
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Series production
A production-ready material and manufacturing process is the major goal at the end of every qualification - and yet it is only the beginning. The main goal should be to establish a component-specific AM process chain. Whether series production continues to be handled by service providers such as Rosswag Engineering or whether the customer wants to bring additive manufacturing in-house as a key technology is decided on a customer-specific and application-specific basis. Rosswag also supports its customers with know-how transfer.
Further components for achieving TRL 9 are application-specific or cross-process certifications. These are necessary for pressure-bearing components, for example, and can be carried out together with our partner TÜV Süd. Finally, Rosswag Engineering also uses experimentally determined data to qualify material models for the simulation of the additive manufacturing process using ANSYS software. This allows the entire process chain to be simulated, from component design and LPBF parameter optimization to heat treatment. This brings us a little closer to the vision of the "digital twin" every day.
