ABSTRACT

In SLS, the main parameters are the laser power, the pulse frequency and the scan speed. The scanning strategy is of less importance. In SLM, the goal is to completely melt the powder in order to have dense parts. Consequently, one uses a very high laser power and the negative thermal effects (like thermal stresses (see (Pohl H. and Simchi A. 2001)) or balling effects (see (N.K. Tolochko, S.E. Mozzharov, I.A. Yadroitsev, T. Laoui, L. Froyen, V.I. Titov, and M.B. Ignatiev 2004)) are important in that case. A solution to control them is to adjust the scanning strategy.