Abstract:

The process and mechanism of a rapid prototyping method , namely , selective laser melting , were ana-lyzed.The characteristics of this method were then summed up and a mathematical expression was deduced to describe the relationship between the temperature rise and the processing parameters. Moreover , the proposed ex-pression was used to optimize the rapid prototyping process. Experiments were finally conducted to verify the proto-typing process with Cu-P alloy as the material , by which the influences of the scanning speed and the laser power on the molding quality , the reasons for metal balling and the methods to avoid balling were discussed. The results indicate that , by reasonably adjusting the processing parameters , such as the scanning speed , the scanning space and the laser power , metal parts with high density can be directly fabricated.

Key words: selective laser melting, rapid prototyping, metal part, prototyping process