Laser metal deposition (LMD) has been applied as coating technology for many years. Today, the technologies capacity to produce 3D depositions leads to a new field of application as additive manufacturing method. In this paper, 3D laser metal deposition of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V is studied with special regard to the demands of additive manufacturing. Therefore, only the powder nozzle is used to create the shielding gas atmosphere, which ensures high geometric flexibility. Furthermore, specimen with high aspect ratio and hundreds of layers are manufactured, which represent typical features in additive manufacturing.
The presented study contains the following steps: First, cylindrical specimens are manufactured with a standard core-shell build-up strategy and mechanical properties as well as fracture mechanisms are determined. Based on the results, experiments are conducted to improve the build-up strategy and new tensile test specimens are built with the improved strategy. The improved strategy incorporates variable track overlap ratios to achieve a constant growth in shell and core area. As blanks, lean cylinders comprising more than 240 layers and a height of 120 mm are manufactured. The specimens are analyzed by X-ray inspection for material defects. Fractured surfaces are observed via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the composition of the surfaces is determined using energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The tensile test results prove mechanical properties close to ASTM F1108 specification for wrought material.