Gear wheel manufacture via selective laser melting

Selective laser melting (SLM) provides a suitable and promising technology for manufacturing complex parts. This enables innovative product design of gear wheels with regard to resource efficiency, lightweight design, and thermo-mechanical load adaption by functional integration. In order to produce gear wheels with sufficient material properties, an optimized SLM-process together with pre- and post-processing is developed. SLM is qualified for the case-hardening steel 16MnCr5/1.7131/5115 (SAE). Appropriate heat treatment processes for stress relieve annealing and case hardening are developed for a reference gear geometry. Resulting material properties are evaluated and compared to conventionally manufactured material based experiments like pulsator tests. Based on process sequence and material properties, the overall potential of additive gear wheel manufacture is deducted focussing on possible applications and costs.