Dimensionless Investigations on Energy Conversion and Analysis of Interlayer Time in Laser‐Based Powder Bed Fusion of Polymers for Polyamide 12 with Nanoadditives and Polypropylene

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Additive manufacturing (AM) offers design freedom and cost‐effective production of complex parts. Powder bed fusion of polymers using laser beam (PBF‐LB/P) is one of the most industrially relevant plastic AM techniques. Although the industrial importance of PBF‐LB/P is steadily increasing, the range of materials available is very limited. This study combines material and process data to determine the energy conversion using dimensionless parameters for unmodified and nanoadditive‐modified polyamide 12 (PA12) powders and polypropylene (PP) powder. Monolayers with different energy inputs are printed and their thickness is measured. The process is described by a dimensionless energy input value and an energy demand value to characterize the energy conversion during processing, considering important material and process parameters. Tensile tests are performed to verify the finding of suitable printing parameters. Furthermore, multilayer experiments are carried out to replicate the printing process in an application‐oriented experiment. This study investigates the influence of the interlayer time (ILT) on the resulting part properties of PA12 and PP. Experiments and numerical models are developed to study the stepwise thickness increase of the first ten layers and density of multilayer samples. The results demonstrate increasing density with higher ILTs, which is in accordance with the simulation predictions.