Porous metal implants: processing, properties, and challenges.

Porous and functionally graded materials have seen extensive applications in modern biomedical devices-allowing for improved site-specific performance; their appreciable mechanical, corrosive, and biocompatible properties are highly sought after for lightweight and high-strength load-bearing orthopedic and dental implants. Examples of such porous materials are metals, ceramics, and polymers. Although, easy to manufacture and lightweight, porous polymers do not inherently exhibit the required mechanical strength for hard tissue repair or replacement.

Influence of deposition orientation on fatigue response of LENS™ processed Ti6Al4V.

Understanding processing-property relationships for directed-energy-deposition (DED) parts remains a major roadblock to widespread process implementation. Herein we investigate the effect of scanning-strategy and testing-orientation on the fatigue response of as-printed Ti6Al4V components. At ~10 cycles, samples tested in the build-direction exhibited ~ 45% decrease in fatigue strength relative to the horizontally-tested samples, owing to higher overall porosity and the testing orientation relative to residual pores.