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The fracture splitting (FS) method for case hardened connecting rods has been developed to improve engine performance while decreasing production costs. The FS method is widely used for automotive connecting rods because it effectively improves their productivity. Normalized forging steels, microalloyed forging steels and powder metals have generally been used as the material in the FS method as they are easily split due to their brittleness. On the other hand, the materials to be used for high performance motorcycles are case hardened low carbon steels because they allow the connecting rods to be lightweight due to their high fatigue strengths. These materials, which have a hardened area of approx. 0.5mm in depth from the surface, have a ductile texture inside. This texture obstructs the crack propagation and makes the split force too high to split without deforming the bearing area.

Laser powder bed fusion is one of the metal additive manufacturing technologies, so-called 3D printing. It has attracted great attentions due to high geometrical flexibility and remarkable metallurgical characteristics. An oil catch tank has been widely used in automotive industries for filtering oil vapors or carbon sludge from blow-by gas as a conventional usage. A pneumatic valve system mainly adopted to high-performance engines is also a potential application of it because undesirable oil infiltrates into air springs during engine operation, resulting in an excess spring pressure. This work focused on developing a lightweight oil catch tank which can be applied to a pneumatic valve system by taking advantage of additive manufacturing techniques. Al-Mg-Sc alloy powder with high tensile strength as well as high ductility were used under the consideration of specific strength, printability and availability.