Aluminium alloy development for 3-D Printing

It is a very interesting project and I believe new high-performance aluminium alloys specially designed for AM is vital for the next generation of aluminium additive components.

The reason is that currently, limited aluminium alloys are available for 3D printing of aluminium alloys in the market. Existing cast alloys such as Al10SiMg and A357 print well but these alloys are limited in terms of performance. Traditional high performance wrought alloys such as 2024, 6061 and 7075 can not be printed because they are susceptible to hot cracks during AM.

Optimisation of existing alloys has been done by several research groups and companies. The first approach in optimisation of exciting alloys for AM was adding grain refiner to existing alloys. For example, Airbus has developed Scalmalloy by adding Scandium to 5000 series aluminium alloys.

HRL lab has added Zr to 7000 series Al alloys. Primary Al3Zr and Al3Sc act as grain refiner in these alloys and printability slightly improve, However, fine feature printability and printing complex shape geometry, out of these alloys is still a challenge.