Investigations on Additively Manufactured Stainless Bearings

Additive manufacturing with multi-material design offers great possibilities for lightweight and function-integrated components. A process chain was developed in which hybrid steel–steel-components with high fatigue strength were produced. For this, a material combination of stainless powder material Rockit® (0.52 wt.% C, 0.9% Si, 14% Cr, 0.4% Mo, 1.8% Ni, 1.2% V, bal. Fe) cladded onto ASTM A572 mild steel by plasma arc powder deposition welding was investigated. Extensive material characterization has shown that defect-free claddings can be produced by carefully adjusting the welding process. With a tailored heat treatment strategy and machining of the semi-finished products, bearing washers for a thrust cylindrical roller bearing were produced. These washers showed a longer fatigue life than previously produced bearing washers with AISI 52100 bearing steel as cladding. It was also remarkable that the service life with the Rockit® cladding material was longer than that of conventional monolithic AISI 52100 washers. This was reached through a favourable microstructure with finely distributed vanadium and chromium carbides in a martensitic matrix as well as the presence of compressive residual stresses, which are largely retained even after testing. The potential for further enhancement of the cladding performance through Tailored Forming was investigated in compression and forging tests and was found to be limited due to low forming capacity of the material.