Fast Development of New Alloys for Metal Forming Using Additive Manufacturing

The industrial development of new materials in metal forming is a time consuming, iterative process. Although it is already being attempted to predict the properties of new materials using computational methods, experimental production and characterization must always be carried out. This typically involves casting of larger blocks of material, which are then processed to specimens. Particularly in the case of high-alloyed materials (e.g., nickel-base superalloys) pronounced macrosegregations occur, which must be removed by time-consuming homogenization. In this paper, additive manufacturing of small specimens is investigated as an alternative to traditional ways for developing new alloys for metal forming. The microstructure and thermomechanical transformation behavior of as-built material are analyzed and it is shown that thermomechanical treatment of the as-built state allows for transforming the microstructure in such a way that processing parameters for forming and final product properties can be identified.