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In an industry first, GKN Additive has successfully adapted and improved a DP600 type material, a two-phase low-alloy steel widely used in the automotive industry, for additive manufacturing. The process enables various designs and applications for mass production in the automotive and other industrial sectors.
Newly developed metallic powder materials DPLA (Dual Phase Low Alloy) and FSLA (Free Sintering Low Alloy) meet the same mechanical property requirements as DP600 (HCT600X / C), such as higher tensile strength (UTS) ) and low yield strength (YS) at UTS ratio.
The materials have been optimized for the powder bed laser melting (DPLA) and metal binder spraying (FSLA) process, respectively, a real world first for these two additive manufacturing processes. Powdered materials as well as parts made from these materials are available for purchase immediately.
Target customers are the automotive industry – for example, to adapt the design of automotive sheet metal parts, or to develop completely new structural components – but also manufacturers in the industrial sector.
Beyond DP600
It is important to understand that DPLA and FSLA are more than the traditional automotive material DP600 (HCT600X / C) simply translated to AM. The new powder materials are specialized for additive manufacturing in terms of spreading, laser absorption (Laser PBF) and sintering (binder jet).
As Christopher Schaak, director of binder jet technology at GKN Additive, explains: “Traditional DP600 offers specific standardized mechanical properties obtained by heat treatment. AM two-phase steel materials developed by GKN Additive, on the other hand, are very flexible in their characteristics, as their mechanical properties can be adjusted more widely by heat treatment after laser or binder jet process. It also allows for a variety of different use cases in the industrial sector and makes the material an attractive candidate for a wide range of customers, as already shown in the IDAM project.
“By using a post heat treatment process to achieve the desired properties with the material in a wide range (medium to high strength properties), an AM supplier can use an established printing process that does not need to be changed, â€said Sebastian Bluemer, AM Laser Technology Manager at GKN Additive. “This helps streamline internal processes and speed up product delivery. “
Prior to using DPLA and FSLA, GKN first received the desired characteristics from a customer, then had to develop and qualify a new material for powder bed laser melting or binder jet process to specifically meet to these requests. It took much longer than the newly developed materials (DPLA / FSLA) with their predefined wide property field, where different mechanical characteristics can be achieved with a developed printing process, simply by varying the subsequent heat treatment.
New designs and weight reduction
For automotive manufacturers, for example, these two materials offer a new level of design freedom and weight reduction potential. “With these AM processes, manufacturers in the automotive industry can build body parts differently than was possible with traditional sheet metal parts. If you are looking at a custom blank, there are many sheet metal parts and support parts that need to be formed and assembled to achieve some rigidity. On the other hand, using structural components printed with AM, you would need fewer process steps and less material, resulting in cost optimization and weight reduction, â€explained Christopher Schaak.
In addition, the time required for a new product to enter functional validation can be significantly shortened through AM processes. “Our customers want to know what the new FA material can achieve in their respective use cases,†said Sebastian Bluemer, “and how it can be used. It is faster to print parts with AM than to retool full traditional production lines and fabricate the parts conventionally. This means that AM is a good solution to quickly and functionally validate a material and component, and to analyze faster and more efficiently, whether the material can help or not for a specific application.
Besides optimizing existing designs, binder jetting and laser powder bed fusion with the new material can also be used to develop completely new designs (design for additive manufacturing), for example bionic structures – c ‘ is where additive manufacturing really shows its power.
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