Impact of Remelting in the Microstructure and Corrosion Properties of the Ti6Al4V Fabricated by Selective Laser Melting

The presence of defects like porosity and lack of fusion can negatively affect the properties of the materials manufactured by Selective Laser Melting (SLM). The optimization of the manufacturing conditions allows reducing the number of defects, but there is a limit for each manufacturing material and process. To expand the manufacturing envelope, a remelting after every layer of the SLM process has been used to manufacture Ti6Al4V alloy samples using an SLM with a CO2 laser. The effect of this processing method on the microstructure, defects, hardness, and, especially, the corrosion properties was studied. It was concluded that the laser remelting strategy causes an increment of the α and β phases from the dissolution of metastable α’. This technique also provokes a decrease in the number of defects and a reduction of the hardness, which are also reduced with lower scanning speeds. On the other hand, all the corrosion tests show that a low scanning speed and the laser remelting strategy improve the corrosion resistance of the Ti6Al4V alloy since parameters like the Open Circuit Potential (OCP) and the Polarization Resistance (Rp) are nobler and the mass gain is lower.