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Although 3D-printed steel comes with a lot of advantages—including increased flexibility and low lead times—few metals are specifically designed for the process of printing.
Scientists from Purdue University and the University of South China have developed a new alloy by using a machine algorithm to track 81 physicochemical features of elements, as well as how those elements interact with the 3D printing process.
The resulting metal was rust-proof, had a strength increase of 30 percent, and its ductility doubled—a major leap forward for additive metal manufacturing.3D-printing metal comes with some obvious benefits. Unbounded by typical tooling and traditional manufacturing, structures built with these methods can be highly complex, reduce material waste, and significantly cut down on lead times. But a lot of the metals used for these purposes today weren’t developed as 3D-printing material—at least, not at first.
According to 3Dprint.com, many of today’s additive metal materials were originally developed for forging or casting, and later adopted for 3D-printing purposes. But as with anything jerry-rigged to fit some other purpose, this can lead to strength issues, defects, or other inefficiencies—especially during the heating and cooling process required for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) printers.
Now, researchers behind a new international study have created an “interpretable machine learning” model that can churn through 81 fundamental physicochemical features of elements—drilling down to their very atomic radii and electron behaviors—to develop an ultra-strong 3D-printable rust-proof alloy. The algorithm also accounted for how the material would react to the 3D printing process itself, meaning that the material it helped create was developed with the application specifically in mind. The results of the study were published in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing.
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