Abstract
The main materials for 3D printing of titanium are fine metal alloy powders from which produce final articles with required quality. These powders must have definite chemical compositions, physical/mechanical characteristics, and also necessary operational properties. Key parameters of titanium alloy powders are homogeneity of chemical compositions, microstructures as well as flow ability. Conventional atomisation methods for metal powders like GA, PREP, PA, etc, are complicated and sufficiently expensive. Alternative production route is usage of complex processing technology of titanium alloy scrap as initial raw material. Spheriodised powder manufacturing scheme which includes raw material preparation, preliminary and final treatments have been presented. At the first step titanium scrap was divided according to titanium alloy types, purified from contaminants and oxide films. Then prepared materials were converted to non-spherical powders with definite fractional compositions using hydrogenation/de-hydrogenation (HDH) method. Experimental HDH equipment allows close cycle of hydrogen recovery almost without losses. Obtained non-spherical powders were treated in the plasma unit yielding spherical titanium alloy. Offered technical solutions permit production of raw materials for 3D printing from scrap with high actual yield of required fractional compositions.
Highlights
Modern solutions for technical assignments including their economics require the following: minimisation of raw material and energy consumption, concentration on the most important production directions with obtaining of maximum profit.Resource and energy spending are based on the definite technological process and related equipment.The above fully applies to metallurgical industry where the most important target is significant decrease in energy consumption for yielding of final metal products [1].Application of additive manufacturing technologies allows significant minimisation for coefficient of material usage which is a weight ratio between final article and initial raw material [2]
The main method for titanium alloy powder synthesis is pulverisation of melts [3]. This technology includes: titanium sponge manufacture, its mixing with master alloys, compacting of sponge block, its melting to ingot, ingot processing to required work piece, and work piece re-melting with pulverisation to metal powder
Each technique needs definite powder size and preferable particle shape. The former is defined by applied energy method (Fig. 1) For example, selective laser melting (SLM) has optimum particle size 20-45
Summary
Modern solutions for technical assignments including their economics require the following: minimisation of raw material and energy consumption, concentration on the most important production directions with obtaining of maximum profit.Resource and energy spending are based on the definite technological process and related equipment.The above fully applies to metallurgical industry where the most important target is significant decrease in energy consumption for yielding of final metal products [1].Application of additive manufacturing technologies (including titanium industry) allows significant minimisation for coefficient of material usage (more than 0.9) which is a weight ratio between final article and initial raw material (reciprocal of this factor is called “buy-to-fly” parameter) [2]. The above fully applies to metallurgical industry where the most important target is significant decrease in energy consumption for yielding of final metal products [1]. Application of additive manufacturing technologies (including titanium industry) allows significant minimisation for coefficient of material usage (more than 0.9) which is a weight ratio between final article and initial raw material (reciprocal of this factor is called “buy-to-fly” parameter) [2].
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