Mechanical Characterization of 17-4PH Stainless Steel Manufactured by Means of Selective Laser Melting Technology

3d printing is a manufacturing process based on the addition of material layer by layer until the completion of workpieces. The rapid development of additive manufacturing, in recent years, is due to its many advantages, including material consumption and waste minimization, use of pure raw materials, low post-processing requirements, time and cost reduction, high customization of the finished product, fast prototyping, and freedom of design. So, exploiting the huge potential of these innovative technologies, it is possible to propose their application also in some fields of engineering for which they have never been considered, such as seismic and structural engineering. In fact, the most common metallic materials typically employed for those applications (steel, aluminium, titanium and nickel alloys), can be used to produce elements with outstanding structural properties by 3D printing technologies. In this aim, this paper shows the main outcomes of an experimental campaign finalized to an extensive mechanical characterisation of 17-4PH stainless steel, one of the most widely used metallic materials for Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology. In particular, the effects of one of the main printing parameters, i.e. scanning times, on the material mechanical behaviour are evaluated by means of tensile strength tests.