Charakterisierung der Oberflächengüte und Grenzabmessungen beim selektiven Laserschmelzen

Additive manufacturing technologies, like for example selective laser sintering or melting are representing a revolution of production technology. With these techniques the production of many parts gets simplified or even possible. To reach required quality standards the different processes have to be evaluated. In this work the production of parts out of Maraging Steel using the Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) method was examined. DMLS was invented by EOS GmbH, a German company which also built the used machine called EOSINT M280. To evaluate the ability of production the lower limits of structure dimensions, the dimensional stability and the reached surface quality were determined. Therefore a CAD-program was used to create 3D-models in a form, that these properties could be characterized as good as possible. After their production the samples were prepared to insure a good quality of measurement. The size of the manufactured structures was determined by the use of mechanical measuring devices, micrographs and the mathematics program Matlab. The surface quality was examined by a confocal microscope. For surfaces which were not reachable or too rough for the microscope, the quality was also measured by Matlab.