Concentric Scanning Strategies for Laser Powder Bed Fusion: Porosity Distribution in Practical Geometries

Besides the optimisation of process parameters such as laser power or scan speed, the choice of the scan path represents a possibility to optimise the laser powder bed fusion process even further. The usual hatching strategy creates a homogeneous microstructure but makes it necessary to switch the laser off and on after each scan vector, which can slow down the fabrication. Moreover, the end of each scan vector is a location susceptible to the creation of keyhole pores. In this work, these disadvantages were meant to be avoided by using scan strategies that consist of longer paths and thus less end of track points. To this end, an open-source tool to tailor the LPBF G-code to geometric part features and advanced path configurations was developed and embedded into a co-visualization platform. With this tool, specimens built with four different types of paths were fabricated and the effect of these alternative scan strategies on pore distributions and path neighbourhood was investigated using micro-computed tomography. In the examined example geometry, a spiral scan pattern reduced the distance the laser had to jump between scanning by 78%. However, with the alternative path patterns, the defect architecture was strongly dependant on the part geometry and increased the overall porosity to 0.42%. Respective alleviation approaches are therefore necessary and are discussed in the remainder of this work.