Honeywell and SLM Solutions announced a cooperation in 2019, based on high-thickness metal powder bed fusion 3D printing, aimed at reducing manufacturing time and reducing the cost of producing 3D printed aircraft parts to meet the needs of the aerospace industry.
At present, this cooperation has made new progress. As part of the cooperation between Honeywell (China) and SLM Solutions, the newly developed aluminum alloy F357 parameter set is a new beryllium-free version AlSi7Mg0,6 (A357) , Compared with die-casting parts, the material properties have been significantly improved.
Honeywell conducted identification work on aluminum structures, using increased layer thicknesses of 60 and 90 μm on the four-laser SLM500 selective laser melting 3D printer. The SLM solution provides Honeywell with a common set of aluminum parameters to complete material identification to achieve the best material performance.
Different manufacturing parameters per unit time bring significant efficiency improvement
Now, the development of these new parameter sets for aluminum alloy F357 with a layer thickness of 60 μm and a 700 W laser has reached an important milestone. Compared with traditional die-casting parts, the performance of the material has been greatly improved, and now it has exceeded the recognized performance of aerospace metal parts.
Aluminum alloy F357 is not only light in weight, but also has better corrosion resistance and required mechanical properties than traditional aluminum alloys, such as high strength in a wide temperature range. It has excellent weldability and is very suitable for post-processing, such as mechanical processing or electrochemical (such as anodizing) processing. These characteristics make F357 very suitable for thin-walled and complex structures in the aerospace or automotive industries.