Importance of feedstock powder selection for mechanical properties improvement of cold spray additively manufactured Ti6Al4V deposits

CSAM (cold spray additive manufacturing) of Ti6Al4V is a challenging task and high-quality deposits conforming to the AM application standards have not been developed so far. In our study, two distinct feedstock Ti6Al4V powders with different morphology and microstructure, spherical and crystalline, were used and their influence on the deposits was investigated in terms of microstructure as well as tensile properties. The results indicate the mechanical strength and ductility of the as-deposited samples to be in the range of 8–30 % compared to wrought Ti6Al4V and highlight a significant anisotropy in different in-plane directions. The post-treatments of the deposits from the spherical, plasma atomized powder effectively reduced the porosity and triggered microstructural homogenization and recrystallization, leading to a significant increase in the yield and tensile strengths, reaching 892 MPa and 954 MPa, respectively, while achieving an enormous enhancement in the elongation to 21.6 % at the same time. This was in a striking contrast to the deposits from the crystalline powder: despite the yield and tensile strength increase to 853 MPa and 1058 MPa, respectively, the elongation remained virtually zero, highlighting the importance of the feedstock powder selection in cold spray additive manufacturing of Ti6Al4V.