Influence of substrate surface morphology on wetting behavior of tracks during selective laser melting of aluminum-based alloys

AlSi12 samples were prepared by selective laser melting (SLM) under different processing conditions in order to obtain different top surface morphologies, where single tracks were produced using a fixed processing parameter to reveal the mechanism of the single track on different morphologies. The results show that the morphologies of single tracks changed with roughness of the top surface (Top R_a) of SLM parts, reflected in the variation of wetting angles on the surface processed previously as well as in dimensions of height, width, and depth at the cross-section of each single track. These changes were mainly caused by different wettability and flow behavior of the molten metal under various solidification environments of the single track during SLM. A poor solidification environment in which numerous balls existed limited an effective wetting behavior of molten metal on a previously processed surface of a SLM sample because of an increasing solid-liquid contact area, thus causing dramatical instability of the melt pool and attendant inferior processability of the single track. Meanwhile, under the action of surface tension, the molten metal had a high tendency to transfer into a pore near the single track to form an extending track or flow toward an upper region of melt to form a balling track, hence showing various morphologies of single tracks. This study proposes a theory of the solidification mechanism of single track on the non-ideal surface to provide a better understanding of the SLM processing of Al-Si alloy.