Investigation of strength material for additive manufacturing using 3d metal printer

Rapid advances in 3D printing enable the automotive sector to shorten the design cycles, improve flexibility and support customised manufacturing, overcoming the limitations of conventional methods. However, direct comparisons of impact performance particularly those employing instrumented techniques to analyse strain–time signals between SLM-produced SS 316L specimens of varying thicknesses and these specific conventional reference materials remain limited, leading to uncertainty regarding the use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) parts in safety-critical applications. This study aims to assess the strength of additive manufacturing Stainless Steel 316L (SS 316L) powder at various specimen thicknesses and to compare it against the conventional SS 304 and Al 6061-T6. To capture the strain signal, a Charpy machine, a data acquisition system and strain gauges were used in the experiment. Specimen preparation followed the ASTM E8 for tensile test and ASTM E23 for the Charpy impact. Charpy specimens with thicknesses 5, 7.5 and 10 mm were fabricated using an Ermaksan Enavision 120 Selective Laser Melting (SLM) 3D printer under controlled parameters. Results show that increase in specimen thicknesses proportionally increase the absorbed energy and the area under the curve. Compared to reference material, SS 304 exhibited highest impact resistance, followed by AM SS 316L and Al 6061-T6. These findings demonstrate that AM materials can closely match the performance of conventional material. Furthermore, optimising SLM parameters and applying post-processing can improve impact toughness.