Metal Powder for AM (Additive Manufacturing) and Manufacturing Processes

Abstract

Recently AM became one of the most revolutionary metal forming technologies in certain market fields in the world. Powder makers focus on supplying powder suitable for this new market. Big users and AM machine makers tend to acquire powder makers in order to secure the performance, quality and economics of their products. Often times, users of AM machines and AM machine makers are not familiar with metal powder manufacturing technology, because metal powders are made primarily for PM (Powder Metallurgy) or surface coating.

This review intends to summarize the demands of metal powder for AM industry and various metal powder manufacturing technologies for it. AM methods require powder with different characteristics, as melting together and solidifying are totally different from solid state sintering and AM does not need conventional compactibility of powder at all. On top of it, handling of metal powder before printing or jetting is the new demands.

Various Metal powder manufacturing technologies have been developed and some of them are commercially used for PM and surface coating. Depending on AM method and material. the optimum metal powder manufacturing technology should be chosen. The authors show typical grades suitable to each printing method and material.