A Study on the Effects of the Use of Gas or Water Atomized AISI 316L Steel Powder on the Corrosion Resistance of Laser Deposited Material

Water atomized and gas atomized powders are commonly used in 3D laser manufacturing. Both types of AISI 316L stainless steel powders are available which differ in their manganese content. This is due to specific procedures related to the two different atomization process. The amount of manganese in the laser processed part might have important implications in its corrosion resistance. It could lead to the formation of manganese sulfides (MnS) which are known to be initiation sites for pitting corrosion. In this work, corrosion performance of laser deposited 316L steel using gas and atomized powders is compared by means of potentiodynamic polarization tests in 0.35%wt. NaCL solution. Worse performance of the gas atomized samples is observed as with respect to the water atomized ones in terms of polarization resistance, corrosion rate and pitting susceptibility.