Characterization of powder bed selective laser sintering for multi-material additive manufacturing of Ni and Cu

Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing (AM) technology capable of producing fully dense, high strength parts with complex geometries. However, its application is currently limited to single-material components, restricting the potential for individual user functional customization for each part, which would be advantageous across many industries. Much effort is being undertaken to develop nozzle-based powder deposition mechanisms to enable multi-material production in SLM, which would enable further design complexity and precise material-property matching. Current multi-material deposition systems face significant challenges, including geometrical inaccuracies and material cross-contamination, which must be addressed to enhance the development of a feasible multi-material SLM system. This paper presents a vibration-induced nozzle powder deposition and an angled-leveling blade mechanism that addresses these key limitations. The system successfully demonstrates full deposition of a uniform and leveled powder bed comprising nickel and copper, thereby significantly reducing material contamination. The results showed that blade translation speed was less impactful than the blade angle on material contamination. A more complex, multi-layer geometry was also developed, but magnetism issues in the nickel powder compounded significantly when moving to multiple layers, therefore it was substituted with 316L SS powder to resume the study. Potential strategies are presented but are not investigated in this study. This development offers a promising step toward the broader adoption of multi-material additive manufacturing (MMAM) in SLM, improving the outlook on future developments where users can produce functional, application-tailored AM parts.