Powders for Additive Manufacturing: From Design to Certification

Abstract:

Rina Consulting Centro Sviluppo Materiali (CSM) has been involved in the study and development of powder metallurgy for different applications, thanks to its participation in many research industrial and funded projects. The entire metal powder production chain takes place within the company's own researcher and facilities. This allows to produce high quality powders starting from alloy design, VIGA atomization and chemical, rheological and particle size analysis. In recent years, the development has mainly concerned manufacturing processes. Currently only a limited number of metal alloys can be processed by AM. For that reason, the alloy design becomes a really important topic to enlarge AM capabilities to other materials and applications. Starting from commercial Thermodynamic and Kinetic codes and proprietary models on solidification and micro-segregation, the alloy chemical composition can be fine-tuned to optimize the microstructure, considering the target properties of the material and the relevant AM processing windows, taking into account also the post process treatment conditions. Moreover, the knowledge of the production plants allows CSM to have a wide vision on the realization and the characterization of the metal powders focusing to achieve the best powder quality suitable for AM applications. Finally, AM is a relatively “new” process, standardization is still an ongoing activity involving several communities and organizations like ASTM, AWS and ISO; in this contest CSM has already designed the guidelines for qualification and certification processes and has created a dedicated laboratory to qualify powders of AM players.

• Periodical: Materials Science Forum (Volume 1016)
• Pages: 1473-1478
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/MSF.1016.1473
• Online since: January 2021
• Authors: Oriana Tassa*, Laura Alleva, Roberto Sorci
• Keywords: Alloy Design, Am, Cost Reduction, Gas Atomization, Metal Powder

References

[1] Wohlers, T. &. (2018). Wohlers Report. Colorado: Wohlers Associates Inc.

[2] Frost & Sullivan's Global 360° Research Team (May 2016), Global Additive Manufacturing Market, Forecast to 2025, Frost & Sullivan, Mountain View, California.

[3] NIST Special Publication 1176: http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1176.

[4] A. N. D. Gasper et al., Additive Manufacturing, Volume 24, December 2018, Pages 446-456.