Post by RMIT Centre for Additive Manufacturing

We're excited to share our latest paper published in the Journal of Materials Processing Technology, titled: "Towards Controlled Processing of High-Conductivity Cu alloy (CuCrZr) on Inconel (IN718) substrate through Beam Shaping and Process Control in PBF-LB/M" 📄 This work is the result of a collaboration between RMIT Centre for Additive Manufacturing and the Institute for the Industrialisation of Smart Materials (ISM) at Hamburg University of Technology, presenting a systematic single-track study evaluating laser beam shaping as a tool to control the interface between CuCrZr and IN718 in multi-material PBF-LB/M, two dissimilar alloys of growing interest for rocket combustion chamber applications, yielding the following key insights: · Processing window redefined: ring-dominant beam profiles unlock a significantly broader window for defect-free deposition, fundamentally changing how the melt pool behaves compared to traditional Gaussian sources. · New clues on cracking: our results point to a possible diffusion pathway at the grain boundary level that may explain why some boundaries crack and others don't. · Heat-affected zone, decoupled: one of the beam configurations tested achieves something unusual — a HAZ width that stays essentially constant, independent of the laser parameters used. · From single tracks to a mechanistic framework: the findings lay the groundwork for predicting and controlling multi-material interfaces well beyond this specific alloy pair. Taken together, this work shows that beam shaping isn't just a tuning knob — it's a mechanistically necessary tool for controlling interfacial intermixing and cracking in dissimilar-material additive manufacturing. This research was conducted as part of the REDI Program (RMIT European Doctoral Innovators) and has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101034328. Congratulations to Jose Manuel Crego Lozares, Alexander Medvedev, Andrey Molotnikov, Milan Brandt, and Ingomar Kelbassa (Mr.) on these findings! 👏 🌺 🔗 Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/gVaZ9BJ7 #additive_manufacturing #3dprinting #RCAM #rmituniversity #ISM #TUHH #IN718 #CuCrZr #BeamShaping #MultiMaterial #REDIprogram #MarieSklodowskaCurie #HorizonEurope