Selective Laser Melting of Magnesium and Magnesium Alloys

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) offers the possibility to create three dimensional parts by having full freedom of design. Therefore prototypes can be produced faster and conventionally manufactured parts can be shaped individually, including an optimized design regarding potential loads and parts weight. The manufacturing of biocompatible metals like 316L and TiA16V4 is already industrially established. Because of the corrosive and mechanical properties of magnesium and the advantages of the SLM process, using magnesium is of great interest for manufacturing individual biodegradable implants. Recent investigations on SLM of magnesium have not led to successful operation so far. Due to the low vaporizing temperature, manufacturing non-porous and three dimensional parts from magnesium was not possible yet. Following a new strategy, using an industrial SLM system with an overpressure building chamber, investigations on SLM of magnesium are now carried out in order to overcome these difficulties and produce fully dense three dimensional parts.