With an increasing trend in product individualization, manufacturing custom-designed solutions and focusing on the explicit industry’s needs are crucial to the manufacturer’s success. Especially within high-tech industries such as aerospace industry, high-strength, large-sized but still lightweight metal parts are required. Although the Direct-Energy-Deposition (DED)-technology offers a proven outset point for targeting this issue, there are few material-, metallurgic-, process-, and geometry specific data available to support the initial design process of such parts. This contribution presents a profound study of different steel- and aluminium materials with respect to their metallurgic and mechanical characteristics. Using a state-of-the art DED-Laser system, tensile test specimens have been manufactured with alternative layer orientations. These specimens are analyzed with regard to the required milling oversize, heat-induced stress deformation, metallurgic characteristics and their tensile characteristics. As a result of this investigation, a suitable baseline for the future generation of a DED design-by-feature catalogue is given
