Laser additive manufacturing of 3D meshes for optical applications

Selective laser melting (SLM) is a widely used additive manufacturing process that can be used for printing of intricate three dimensional (3D) metallic structures. Here we demonstrate the fabrication of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V alloy based 3D meshes with nodally-connected diamond like unit cells, w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-02, Vol.13 (2), p.e0192389-e0192389
Main Authors: Essa, Khamis, Sabouri, Aydin, Butt, Haider, Basuny, Fawzia Hamed, Ghazy, Mootaz, El-Sayed, Mahmoud Ahmed
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3D printing
Analysis
Earth Sciences
Engineering and Technology
Laser industry
Lasers
Manufacturing industries
Optical properties
Physical Sciences
Printing, Three-Dimensional
Prostheses and Implants
Services
Surface Properties
Titanium
Titanium alloys
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Summary:Selective laser melting (SLM) is a widely used additive manufacturing process that can be used for printing of intricate three dimensional (3D) metallic structures. Here we demonstrate the fabrication of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V alloy based 3D meshes with nodally-connected diamond like unit cells, with lattice spacing varying from 400 to 1000 microns. A Concept Laser M2 system equipped with laser that has a wavelength of 1075 nm, a constant beam spot size of 50μm and maximum power of 400W was used to manufacture the 3D meshes. These meshes act as optical shutters / directional transmitters and display interesting optical properties. A detailed optical characterisation was carried out and it was found that these structures can be optimised to act as scalable rotational shutters with high efficiencies and as angle selective transmission screens for protection against unwanted and dangerous radiations. The efficiency of fabricated lattice structures can be increased by enlarging the meshing size.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0192389