US Navy, Texas A&M team up to advance 3d-printed steel technology

Material researchers from the United States Navy and Texas A&M University have developed a way to create 3d-printed steel that matches the tensile strength capabilities of traditional steel manufacturing.  The approach relies on a mathematical model to, as Engineering.com reports, “optimize laser settings to drastically reduce the type of printing flaws that reduce tensile strength.”  When compared with conventional casting and subtractive steel manufacture, 3d-printing fabrication typically results in a higher number of microscopic gaps within the material that result from the 3d-printers additive making process. Those who have used a desktop 3d-printer will know that by definition, the printer deposits each successive layer one on top of the other, often leaving imperfections at the edges and never quite matching exactly the intended form. That phenomena is paralleled within the material itself, producing a 3d-printed object that is also filled with tiny air gaps and other materia...