Advanced material studies for additive manufacturing in terms of future gear application

Additive manufacturing by laser beam melting is predestined for complex component geometry like integrated cooling channels without enormous posttreatment processing. To investigate the influence of build-up direction in terms of later tooth excitation of gear-wheels, first fundamental material analyses were accomplished in this publication. Therefore, additively produced specimens were used to determine the build-up direction dependent elastic properties of the material in all three spatial directions based on tensile and torsion tests. The anisotropies of elastic limits and breaking points of previous studies were confirmed in this paper. Furthermore, torsion values were also determined depending on build-up direction. Laser beam melted X3NiCoMoTi18-9-5 (hotwork tool steel) was shown to exhibit extremely high performance under shear loading in comparison to conventionally processed steel. The influence of build-up direction on torsional strength was also shown.