Material properties of AISI H10 (32CrMoV12-28) hot work tool steel processed by Laser Powder Bed Fusion with 200°C substrate preheating temperature

In this study the processability of hot work tool steel AISI H10 (32CrMoV12-28) using the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) process was investigated. The tool steel was processed in two build jobs with different parameter settings. The produced samples were examined for defects such as cracks, pores and lack of fusion. Due to the high cooling rates in the L-PBF process and the resulting residual stresses, cracks were found despite substrate preheating. In a second build job the process parameters were adapted without changing the preheating temperature of 200°C. Changing the process parameters led to crack-free AISI H10 hot work tool steel samples. Process parameters with the highest density and lowest number of defects were used to produce tensile and notch impact samples which were used to determine the mechanical properties.