Preliminary Testing of Temperature Measurements in Selective Laser Melting

Selective laser melting (SLM) based on added-material manufacturing method is one of the Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies that can build full density metallic components. In this study, a thermal imager with about 670 nm wavelength was employed to collect build surface process temperature information during SLM fabrication using Monel K500 powder. The major findings are as follows. (1) At nominal process conditions of 600 mm/s beam speed and 180 W beam power, the melt pool has a length of about 0.6 mm and a width of about 0.36 mm. (2) The obtained melt pool length/width ratio is about 1.5 for different build height. With the increase of build height, no clear trend was observed for melt pool length/width ratio and melt pool length value. (3) It is difficult to obtain true temperature in this study but it is possible to estimate melt pool dimension with the identified radiant liquidus temperature.