Machinability study in orthogonal cutting of additively manufactured Inconel 718 with specifically induced porosity

In comparison to conventional manufacturing technologies, additive manufacturing (AM) offers great design freedom, the integration of functions into components, new lightweight design concepts and high material efficiency. In aerospace and turbomachinery, this technology is increasingly coming into focus, especially the laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M) process. PBF-LB/M is already used for some aerospace components, which are often exposed to high thermal and mechanical loads. Dependent on the component geometry, support structures are required for AM, which then usually have to be removed by machining. One suitable support structure is the use of material with specifically induced porosity. This ensures good heat dissipation and thus homogeneous component properties, high retention forces and short process times in PBF-LB/M. However, the machinability of porous, additively manufactured material has hardly been researched so far. One preliminary investigation of milling porous, additively manufactured Inconel 718, though, showed significantly poorer machinability of the porous material compared to the dense material. To further examine this phenomenon, this paper presents the results of fundamental machinability studies with porous, additively manufactured Inconel 718 in orthogonal cutting. The investigations with tungsten carbide cutting tools on a special fundamental test rig include the analysis of the cutting force, the chip geometry, the chip temperature and the surface quality. The research results provide explanations for the poorer machinability of the porous material and derived approaches for improving the machinability in future studies.