Abstract
The quality and properties of metal powders are essential for powder metallurgical (PM) processes in general and for additive manufacturing (AM) processing routes in particular. Thus, a variety of atomization technologies were established meeting the multiple needs of the different processing technologies. However, the production of refractory metal alloy powder remains challenging due to their high liquidus temperatures (>2000 °C), the formation of brittle intermetallic phases, as well as the reactivity with and sensitivity to interstitials of the constituting elements. In this contribution, powders made of Mo-20Si-52.8-Ti (at.%) were produced by a novel ultrasonic atomization (UA) process at laboratory-scale using an industrial electrode induction gas atomization (EIGA) process with a modified electrode concept for the first time. UA allows flexibility in alloy composition due to the arc melting-based principle, while the EIGA electrode is PM manufactured from elemental powders to provide similar flexibility on a larger scale. The powders resulting from these two processes were compared with respect to size distribution, sphericity, microstructure and phase constitution, chemical composition, and interstitial impurity content. In addition, several powder batches were produced with the UA process in order to assess the process reliability and stability. The properties, quality, and quantities of UA powders perfectly meet the requests for alloy development for powder bed fusion AM, while the modified EIGA process allows the upscaling of the alloy powder quantities.
Highlights
Since its beginnings in the field of rapid prototyping, powder bed fusion additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have reached broad industrial acceptance and are increasingly used for the series production of components in medical and aerospace industries
The quality and properties of metal powders are essential for powder metallurgical (PM) processes in general and for additive manufacturing (AM) processing routes in particular
The properties, quality, and quantities of ultrasonic atomization (UA) powders perfectly meet the requests for alloy development for powder bed fusion AM, while the modified electrode induction gas atomization (EIGA) process allows the upscaling of the alloy powder quantities
Summary
Since its beginnings in the field of rapid prototyping, powder bed fusion additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have reached broad industrial acceptance and are increasingly used for the series production of components in medical and aerospace industries. The main advantage of AM is the freedom in geometric design, which is increasingly used for structural optimization of lightweight components. AM opens up another field of potential applications. The number of alloy variations that have been deliberately designed for this purpose is still limited. Despite this huge potential, one reason why new alloy developments for AM are progressing rather slowly is that even the production of the alloy powders in these cases is challenging
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