Investment in our future

AddSteel – Development of new function-adapted steel materials for additive manufacturing.

Summary

The steel industry and the plant engineering as well as the construction sector need to meet the challenges of Industrie 4.0 and digitalization if they are to remain internationally competitive.

The additive manufacturing technique known as SLM offers huge potential in terms of the timely production of functionally enhanced components for plant engineering and construction. With regard to steel, in particular, the range of materials on offer is very limited, and so far it has not been possible to process many of the frequently used steel materials by means of the SLM method.

Attempts to process such materials by adapting the SLM process control system and SLM equipment technology do not go far enough, and they do not fully utilize all the available potential.

The selective adaptation of the material composition combined with the adaptation of the SLM process control system and SLM equipment technology offer huge potential in allowing new steel materials with adapted, adjustable properties to be used for the SLM and therefore also for the steel industry and plant engineering and construction sector.

Runtime

January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021

SMS group GmbH is coordinating this joint research project, which is being funded and promoted as part of the “New Materials” lead market competition.

Objective

The aim is to develop optimized steel materials that can be used for additive manufacturing. The focal point of the project is to define material compositions and to determine the optimal parameters for powder production and for the actual 3D printing process itself.

As well as attaining the ideal powder size distribution, the performance of the printed components is tested, and the cost efficiency of the manufacturing process is examined.

Contact

Dr.-Ing. Thomas Nerzak

Nerzak, Thomas

Research & Development/Additive Manufacturing

+49 2161 350 1752
SMS group GmbH
Ohlerkirchweg 66
41069 Mönchengladbach
Germany

This project is funded by the European Union and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.