An Investigation Into Multi-Track Deposition in Laser Powder-Bed Fusion: Transient Regions Analysis and Scan Length Effects

Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) additive manufacturing has been used to fabricate complex-shaped structures, which often consist of fine features. Due to transient process phenomena, there are differences in terms of the melt pool formation and the surface morphology depending upon the feature area and scan parameters. This study investigates the scan length effect on the surface morphology and the presence of transient length and width that may have a significant effect as the layer addition continues. For this purpose, four scan lengths (0.25 mm, 0.5 mm, 1.0 mm, and 2.0 mm) are used to fabricate six tracks with back-and-forth scanning. A full factorial design of experiments is used to form multi-track depositions with three levels of power (125 W, 160 W, and 195 W), two levels of scan speed (550 mm/s and 1000 mm/s), and four levels of hatch spacing (80 μm, 100 μm, 120 μm, and 140 μm). A white light interferometer is used to acquire the surface data, and MATLAB is used for surface topographical analysis. The results indicated that the scan length has a significant effect on the surface characteristics. The average height of multi-track deposits increases with the decrease of the scan length. Moreover, the transient length and width can be approximated based on the height variation along both the scan and transverse directions, respectively.