CONSOLIDATION AND SIMULATIONS OF HOT ISOSTATIC PRESSING OF SELECTIVE LASER SINTERED STAINLESS STEEL PARTS

Abstract

The method of hot isostatic pressing of selective laser sintered parts is proposed to make metal parts with complex structure and high density. The forming process is greatly simplified by removing the operation of cold isostatic pressing. Therefore, it is a new effective method for manufacturing complex metal parts. A bevel gear has been made by this method using AISI304 stainless steel. The simulation of hot isostatic pressing has been carried out using the Drucker–Prager–Cap model in ABAQUS/Standard and the hyperbolic-sine creep subroutine. The simulation results have been compared with those of the experiments. The final relative density of the parts by this method increases up to 0.90 from original 0.37. The results show that there is only big volumetric contraction without obvious distortions. The errors of the main dimensions are within 6%, which indicates good agreement between the experimental results and the calculated results.