Manufacture by selective laser melting and mechanical behavior of commercially pure titanium

Commercially pure titanium (CP-Ti) has received a great deal of attention in medical applications. Improvement of its mechanical properties plays a key role in enhancing the biomechanical compatibility of Ti implants, leading to avoid revision surgeries. Emerging advanced manufacturing technologies such as selective laser melting (SLM) is providing an ideal platform for producing components with almost no geometric constraints and is economically feasible down to a batch size of one. This study presents the results of using SLM to produce CP-Ti parts starting from powder with a wide grain size range up to 100 pm. Accurate manipulation of SLM manufacturing parameters were applied to produce nearly full dense (>99.5%) CP-Ti parts without any post-treatments. Compared with the properties of those manufactured by traditional processing technologies, the microhardness, compressive, and tensile strengths of SLM-processed CP-Ti parts have been improved to 261 Hv, 1136 MPa, and 757 MPa, respectively, due to the formation of refined martensitic alpha' grains during SLM. The optimal manufacturing parameters could enhance the strength and hardness of CP-Ti and yet maintaining the ductility of titanium. Fractography study of the tensile-failed SLM-processed specimens showed that incompletely melted particles and porosities caused early fracture in porous sample. Mixture of dimples and minor quasi-cleavage facets covered most fracture surface of full dense sample. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.