Heat treatment of SLM-LMD hybrid components

Additive manufacturing is no longer just used for the production of prototypes but already found its way into the industrial production. However, the fabrication of massive metallic parts with high geometrical complexity is still too time-consuming to be economically viable. The combination of the powder bed-based selective laser melting process (SLM), known for its geometrical freedom and accuracy, and the nozzle-based laser metal deposition process (LMD), known for its high build-up rates, has great potential to reduce the process duration. For the industrial application of the SLM-LMD hybrid process chain it is necessary to investigate the interaction of the processes and its effect on the material properties to guarantee part quality and prevent component failure. Therefore, hybrid components are manufactured and examined before and after the heat treatment regarding the microstructure and the hardness in the SLM-LMD transition zone. The experiments are conducted using the nickel-based alloy Inconel 718.