3D printing extends heat-resistant steel’s creep life by over 10 times
A NIMS research team fabricated heat-resistant steel test specimens using laser powder bed fusion (LPBF)—a form of metal 3D printing—and subjected them to creep testing for up to 10,000 hours. The results demonstrated that LPBF significantly extended the creep lives of the specimens, achieving at least a 10-fold increase over heat-resistant steel produced through conventional heat-treatment processes. The research is published in the journal Additive Manufacturing.