The lead market project AddSteel in North Rhine-Westphalia is focusing on the digitalization of the steel industry. Steel manufacturers in Germany are exposed to the ongoing decline in sales in the industry and are therefore forced to develop new materials. New materials are the only way to produce components that meet the increasingly complex requirements of steel industry customers, such as lightweight yet crash-resistant body parts for the automotive industry. In this context, the additive manufacturing process Laser Powder Bed Fusion, LPBF for short, is coming into focus, which can be used to produce functionally improved components from digital data. Entering this form of metallic 3D printing also offers users the opportunity to sustainably optimize the steel processing value network.

In recent years, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen have continuously developed the powder bed-based additive manufacturing process from a method for prototype production to a manufacturing process for the industrial production of complex small series components. The first components are already being manufactured by companies in the aerospace, turbomachinery and medical technology sectors. However, one shortcoming is currently preventing the 3D printing of case-hardening and heat-treatable steel: suitable qualified and certified materials for the corresponding LPBF process, which can be used to additively manufacture components reliably without the formation of cracks and defects, are either not available at all or not yet available to the required extent for industrial production.

Material development until 2021

And this is where the project comes in: since January 2019, the plant manufacturer SMS Group, Deutsche Edelstahlwerke Specialty Steel, the Fraunhofer ILT spin-off Aconity and Fraunhofer ILT have been researching new steel materials optimized for the LPBF process. In AddSteel, the project partners are focusing on iterative alloy development in combination with systematic adaptation of the LPBF process control and plant technology. This will be followed by the construction of demonstrators for the production of new components and spare parts, which will be used to test and validate performance and cost-effectiveness.

SMS Group is already building a plant for atomizing suitable metal powders, Deutsche Edelstahlwerke Specialty Steel is providing the corresponding alloys and Fraunhofer ILT is testing the material processed into powder on LPBF systems. Initial results can be expected at Formnext.

According to documents from Fraunhofer ILT / ag