Stainless steels are the material of choice in many areas, as they are resistant to corrosion and are therefore not only robust against environmental influences, but also offer a long-lasting high-quality appearance.

They are also very strong and tough and are thus often used for weight-bearing duties. Especially when a further aim is to reduce the wear or to obtain high cutting rates, one usually has no other choice but to use to special stainless steels, the so-called tooling steels.

One disadvantage of stainless steels though is the fact that they have relatively poor cutting properties, which often means that the post-processing of the functional surfaces of additively manufactured parts can become very expensive. But this disadvantage can be circumvented by the CEM process: you can directly print your desired near-net-shaped part and, depending on your preferences, process either the green compact directly before the sintering step or your near-net-shaped part after the sintering step. This can therefore save you considerable tooling costs and machine hours.

In cooperation with our material suppliers, we can currently offer you the following materials for use on our ExAM systems. We will of course also provide you with the respective information for the debinding and sintering process.

Applicable stainless steels

• Common stainless steels 304 316L 17-4 PH
• Heat-treatable steels 4340 420 W 42CrMo4 (beta)
• Hardened steels 8620 (beta) 16MnCr5 (beta)
• Low alloy steels FN08 (beta) 8740 (beta)