Research on 17–4PH stainless steels by selective laser melting

Selective laser melting technology (SLM) is a new direction in the forming research of the 17–4PH stainless steels because of the advantages of one-time forming, raw material saving, arbitrary complex structure workpiece forming, and excellent performance. The research status of the 17–4PH stainless steels prepared by SLM in recent years was reviewed in this paper, including the effect of process parameters on the properties of the 17–4PH stainless steels, the improvement on the mechanical properties of the 17–4PH stainless steels by heat treatment and hot isostatic pressing (HIP), the microstructure changes of the 17–4PH stainless steels treated by the different forming ways and the different post-treatments, and the problems and development trend of the 17–4PH stainless steels by SLM.