Processing by Additive Manufacturing Based on Plasma Transferred Arc of Hastelloy in Air and Argon Atmosphere

This research was carried out to determinate the effect of the atmosphere processing conditions (air and argon) and two specific thermal treatments, on the properties of specimens made from the nickel-based alloy Hastelloy C-22 by plasma transferred arc (PTA). Firstly, the additive manufacturing parameters were optimized. Following, two walls were manufactured in air and argon respectively. Afterwards, a determinate number of specimens were cut out and evaluated. Regarding the comparison performed with the extracted specimens from both walls, three specimens of each wall were studied as-built samples. Furthermore, a commonly used heat treatment in Hastelloy, with two different cooling methods, was selected to carry out additional comparisons. In this respect, six additional specimens of each wall were selected to be heat treated to a temperature of 1120 °C for 20 min. After the heat treatment, three of them were cooled down by rapid air cooling (RAC), while the other three were cooled down by water quenching (WQ). In order to study the influence degree of the processing conditions, and how the thermal treatments could modify the final properties of the produced specimens, a detailed characterization was performed. X-ray diffraction and microstructural analyses revealed the phases-presence and the apparition of precipitates, varying the thermal treatment. Moreover, the results obtained after measuring mechanical and tribological properties showed slight changes caused by the variation of the processing atmosphere. The yield strength of the extracted specimens from the two walls achieved values closer to the standards ones in air 332.32 MPa (±21.36 MPa) and in argon 338.14 MPa (±9 MPa), both without thermal treatment. However, the effect of the cooling rate resulted as less beneficial, as expected, reducing the deformation properties of the specimens below 11%, independently of the air or argon manufacturing atmosphere and the cooling rate procedure.