Influencing Factors on Part Quality in Selective Laser Melting

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is a powder bed fusion process to produce additively metal parts. From the current point of view, it seems to be one of the most promising additive manufacturing technologies for the production of end use parts. An increasing number of examples prove the successful application of SLM for technical part production. Nevertheless, they also show the enormous effort that is still required to qualify the production process of every single part individually.The present paper gives an overview of the major influencing factors of the SLM process. To get a comprehensive research approach, existing publications on the topic are taken into account as well as own experimental work, evaluating the effects of the process parameters on the relative density of samples made from tool steel. The experimental setup and the results are described and opportunities for the further research work are discussed.