Preparation of Porous Stainless Steel Parts by Selective Laser Melting

Porous stainless steel materials have been acknowledged as promising biomaterials for use in surgical implant applications. The challenge is to develop a manufacturing process that can cost effectively produce structures that meet these requirements. Selective laser melting (SLM) is a rapid prototyping technique, which is able to form a metallurgical entity by laser beam melting metal powder layer after layer. Therefore, SLM technology is promising in producing stainless steel by setting a different parameter in every processing layer. In this article, this project investigated into fabrication of the porous 316L stainless steel material by SLM technique. Experiments are carried out on a Nd:YAG laser machine. In the SLM experiments, material used is 316L stainless steel powder. Finally, porous 316L stainless steel suitable for medical applications was successfully fabricated in the porosity range of 60%-83% (volume fraction) by controlling the SLM parameters. The compressive strength was found to be ranging from 46 to 103 MPa. It was shown that SLM technique was demonstrated to be a feasible method for building porous 316L stainless steel material.