As researchers continue to seek the expansion of the material base for additive manufacturing, there is a need to focus attention on the Ni–Cu group of alloys which conventionally has wide industrial applications. In this work, the G-NiCu30Nb casting alloy, a variant of the Monel family of alloys with Nb and high Si content is, for the first time, processed via the laser powder bed fusion process (LPBF). Being novel to the LPBF processes, optimum LPBF parameters were determined, and hardness and tensile tests were performed in as-built conditions and after heat treatment at 1000 °C. Microstructures of the as-cast and the as-built condition were compared. Highly dense samples (99.8% density) were achieved after varying hatch distance (80 µm and 140 µm) with scanning speed (550 mm/s–1500 mm/s). There was no significant difference in microhardness between varied hatch distance print sets. Microhardness of the as-built condition (247 HV_0.2) exceeded the as-cast microhardness (179 HV_0.2.). Tensile specimens built in vertical (V) and horizontal (H) orientations revealed degrees of anisotropy and were superior to conventionally reported figures. Post heat treatment increased ductility from 20% to 31% (V), as well as from 16% to 25% (H), while ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and yield strength (YS) were considerably reduced.

Al-Cu-Li alloys are famous for their high strength, ductility and weight-saving properties, and have for many years been the aerospace alloy of choice. Depending on the alloy composition, this multi-phase system may give rise to several phases, including the major strengthening T₁ (Al₂CuLi) phase. Microstructure investigations have extensively been reported for conventionally processed alloys with little focus on their Additive Manufacturing (AM) characterised microstructures. In this work, the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) built microstructures of an AA2099 Al-Cu-Li alloy are characterised in the as-built (no preheating) and preheat-treated (320 °C, 500 °C) conditions using various analytical techniques, including Synchrotron High-Energy X-ray Diffraction (S-HEXRD). The observed dislocations in the AM as-built condition with no detected T₁ precipitates confirm the conventional view of the difficulty of T₁ to nucleate on dislocations without appropriate heat treatments. Two main phases, T₁ (Al₂CuLi) and T_B (Al_7.5Cu₄Li), were detected using S-HEXRD at both preheat-treated temperatures. Higher volume fraction of T₁ measured in the 500 °C (75.2 HV_0.1) sample resulted in a higher microhardness compared to the 320 °C (58.7 HV_0.1) sample. Higher T_B volume fraction measured in the 320 °C sample had a minimal strength effect.

In recent decades, the requirements for plain bearing materials have continually increased, especially with new applications such as wind turbines, which require larger bearings. These new applications have completely different property profiles compared with, for example, bearings in automotive construction. Larger bearings need high strength and wear resistance, which established bearing materials cannot fulfill. Therefore, new alloy systems are required. This publication focuses on the influence of alloy composition and test temperature on the mechanical properties of ZnAlCu alloys. Centrifugally cast specimens were produced for the fabrication of test specimens, which were used to determine the mechanical and tribological properties. Fracture surface and wear trace analysis with scanning electron and light microscopy were used to determine occurring failure and wear mechanisms and to analyze the influence of microstructure on failure. Depending on the composition of the ZnAlCu alloys, up to three times higher strengths can be achieved compared with the white metal alloy SnSb12Cu6ZnAg. Furthermore, all the alloys investigated show good wear properties. Up to 11 wt.% aluminum and 1.5 wt.% copper, a significant decrease in the wear coefficient was observed. Knowledge about the correlation between microstructure, properties, and failure mechanisms of ZnAlCu alloys can be used to produce bearing metal alloys suitable for a wide range of applications. Since the strength values lie between those of white metals and bronze, new fields of application can also be accessed.

The High Pressure Die Casting (HPDC) process is characterized by a high degree of automation and therefore represents a data rich production technology. From concepts such as Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Production (IoP), it is well known that the utilization of process data can facilitate improvements in product quality and productivity. In this work, we present a concept and its first steps of implementation to enable data management via a data lake for HPDC. Our goal was to design a system capable of acquiring, transmitting and storing static as well as dynamic process variables. The measurements originate from multiple data sources based on the Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) within the HPDC cell and are transmitted via a streaming pipeline implemented in Node-Red and Apache Kafka. The data are consecutively stored in a data lake for HPDC that is based on a MinIO object store. In initial tests the implemented system proved it to be reliable, flexible and scalable. On standard consumer hardware, data handling of several thousand measurements per minute is possible. The use of the visual programming language Node-Red enables swift reconfiguration and deployment of the data processing pipeline.

In this paper, the high strength and lightweight Al–Cu–Li alloy (AA2099) is considered in as-built and preheated conditions (440 °C, 460 °C, 480 °C, 500 °C, and 520 °C). The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) in situ preheating on precipitation microstructure, mechanical and corrosive properties of LPBF-printed AA2099 alloy compared to the conventionally processed and heat-treated (T83) alloy. It is shown that precipitations evolve with increasing preheating temperatures from predominantly globular Cu-rich phases at lower temperatures (as-built, 440 °C) to more plate and rod-like precipitates (460 °C, 480 °C, 500 °C and 520 °C). Attendant increase with increasing preheating temperatures are the amount of low melting Cu-rich phases and precipitation-free zones (PFZ). Hardness of preheated LPBF samples peaks at 480 °C (93.6 HV0.1), and declines afterwards, although inferior to the T83 alloy (168.6 HV0.1). Preheated sample (500 °C) shows superior elongation (14.1%) compared to the T83 (11.3%) but falls short in tensile and yield strength properties. Potentiodynamic polarization results also show that increasing preheating temperature increases the corrosion current density (Icorr) and corrosion rate. Indicated by the lower oxide resistance (R_ox), the Cu-rich phases compromise the integrity of the oxide layer.

Distortion (1), residual stresses and hot cracks can facilitate significant decreases in quality characteristics of casting products. Their reduction by a suitable component design (2) and process control is therefore desirable. In the casting process, these characteristics are assumed as a result of the combination of solidification shrinkage paired with the local self-feeding and the geometric constraints imposed on the component by the mold. In gravity die casting (3) of aluminum (4) with thermally well conducting and rigid metal molds, the control of solidification through a localized adjustment of the heat balance (5) appears to be a suitable approach to minimize these effects. The development of an experimental setup for the assessment of the interdependencies of the alloy, casting geometry and cooling are described in this work. A first series of experiments with A356 aluminum alloy and the introduction to the different methods of evaluation are presented. Furthermore, an approach to improve the understanding of the underlying mechanisms is outlined.