Laser spot welding of additive manufactured 304L stainless steel
[1];
[4];
[4];
[4];
- Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States); National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO (United States)
- National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO (United States)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States)
Here, the goal of this work is to understand if an additively manufactured 304L stainless steel exhibits similar spot-welding behavior as wrought 304L stainless steel. Due to the many differences between an additively manufactured component and wrought product, it is important to determine how the material interacts with the laser and how it affects the weld bead morphology. In this paper, the laser coupling efficiency, weld size, and solidification of spot welds produced in wrought and additively manufactured 304L stainless steel were investigated. The coupling efficiency of wrought and additively manufactured 304L stainless steel of similar surface condition were approximately the same over a range of applied laser energies. Laser welding of the untreated (rougher) surface of additively manufactured 304L, however, showed improved coupling efficiency ranging between 3.3 and 100%. The rougher surface traps the incoming light and increases the coupling efficiency at lower laser energies, while at higher energy, the absorption efficiency is dominated by intrinsic absorption from the keyhole formation rather than surface roughness. The resulting spot weld microstructures differed from welds made in wrought 304L and additively manufactured 304L. Welds made in wrought 304L were fully austenitic containing what is suspected to be massive austenite, which suggests that these welds solidified as primary ferrite. Welds made in additively manufactured 304L were also fully austenitic and contained both cellular austenite and what is suspected to be massive austenite. These observations mean that welds made in additively manufactured 304L solidified as primary ferrite and primary austenite. The differences in weld microstructures made in wrought and AM 304L can be attributed to differences in the composition and solidification rate.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- 89233218CNA000001
- OSTI ID:
- 1868245
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-21-30444
- Journal Information:
- Welding in the World, Vol. 66, Issue 5; ISSN 0043-2288
- Publisher:
- Springer NatureCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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