Categoria: Master Theses

The growing interest in the reduction of non-renewable resources led to an increase in “sustainable production” among industrial realities, which focused to reduce the environmental, social and economic impacts of products. In this final dissertation, we investigated the optimal process parameters to produce, by saving energy, components having a good surface finishing made of Inconel718 alloy and manufactured through the Additive Manufacturing process called Selective Laser Melting. In the first phase, a DoE was created and 27 combination process parameters had been used to manufacture samples in Inconel718 alloy with three levels of Laser Power, Scanning Speed and Hatch Spacing and a layer thickness of 0.03mm. Firstly, cylindrical samples having 25mm in length and 10mm in diameter were manufactured by a “Concept Laser CUSING M2” machine. By using a three-phase electrical network analyzer C.A 8331, the power and energy consumption were measured during the three stages of the Selective Laser Melting process. It is emerged that the building stage required greater energy consumption. Secondly,, the density in air and in water of the samples was measured by using the balance called Gibertini Eternity 200CAL. Then, the areal roughness and the roughness of the profile were measured through the confocal microscopy called LEICA DCM3D. A study of the powders was carried out by the electron microscope (SEM) to evaluate the state of INCONEL 718 before and after the printing of the samples. Afterwards, the PL, that is the power absorbed by the machine due only to the action of the laser, was evaluated through the three-phase electrical network analyzer, in order to calculate the specific energy consumption (SEC). In the last stage, after setting a target of roughness to be achieved, the specific energy consumption for the specimens machined on the lathe has been calculated in order to identify the combination that allows to obtain the target roughness with the lowest energy consumption.