Additive manufacturing, especially powder bed fusion of metals using a laser beam (PBF-LB/M), is becoming increasingly important to produce geometrically highly complex or specifically customized components. However, the qualification of new materials, as well as the development of suitable material composition is a time- and cost-intensive process. A resource-efficient material qualification method is important in general when expensive alloy components such as Sc or Ti are used in structural materials and especially important for the emerging field of qualification of functional materials, for example permanent magnets, since they often contain expensive and critical raw materials such as Nd, Co and Dy [1]. Here, we present a method allowing material qualification and development using only around 50 grams of powder from laboratory production. For this purpose, a replication of the PBF-LB/M process by suction casting is presented. The resulting microstructure after the rapid solidification in a PBF-LB/M process is crucial for an assessment of the processability and the resulting structural and functional properties. It is shown that suction casting can reproduce similar microstructures as the PBF-Process in the case of Pr-Fe-Cu-B alloys for permanent magnets [2]. On the other hand, the microstructure of additively manufactured components varies locally due to different solidification rates within the melt pool, which leads to a more complex microstructure, as in suction casting. Nevertheless, suction casting can be used for screening since the compositional influence on the physical and mechanical properties after consolidation can be tested early in the material qualification chain. Based on the suction casting results, a three-step qualification process going from 1D to 3D PBF-LB/M experiments is applied where a small amount of powder is sufficient for PBF-LB/M. The presented method is validated with three different powders, which are based on SmCo, CeCoCu and Pr-Fe-Cu-B alloys.

This work was supported by FiF (Forum für interdisziplinäre Forschung) TU Darmstadt internal funds committee. We would like to thank the partners of the CRC/TRR 270 consortium for the scientific support and discussion.

[1] O. Gutfleisch, M. A. Willard, E. Brück, C. H. Chen, S.G. Sankar, J.P. Liu, Adv. Mater. 23(7), 821-842. (2011).

[2] L. Schäfer, K. Skokov, J. Liu, F. Maccari, T. Braun, S. Riegg, I. Radulov, J. Gassmann, H. Merschroth, J. Harbig, M. Weigold, O. Gutfleisch, Adv. Funct. Mater. 31(33), 2102148. (2021).