**2. Materials and Methods**

The AISI 316L has been chosen as working material. This election has its basis on the wide use of this kind of steel in those fields where the additive manufacturing technologies have the maximum potential of application [12]. The AISI 316 steel offers high mechanical resistance, good corrosion behavior, and, of interest for medical applications, good biocompatibility properties [13]. The combination of these characteristics of the material with the capability of additive manufacturing to manufacture very complex geometries, made to measure in some cases, make of high interest the use of powders of AISI 316L and understanding its behavior in the selective laser melting process.

The commercial powder METCO MetcoClad™ 316L-SI has been used to carry out the real tests. The dominating spherical shape of its particles and its granulometric size distribution, facilitate the development of theoretical hypotheses to adjust the thermo-physical properties in the modelling. Table 1 shows the main characteristics of the commercial powder used.


**Table 1.** Composition and particle size distribution of the MetcoClad™ 316L-SI powder.
