Additive Manufacturing (AM)
Perhaps the fastest growing PM processing technique AM has several variants whether using lasers, electron beam or arcs. However they all have in common the gradual and incremental addition of raw material, in powder form, to produce the finished article.
This leads to a requirement that the rheological properties of the powder generally supplied in 15 – 45µm range, must be understood and controlled to a higher degree than any other application using spherical powder.
Important parameters are:
- Morphology of powder particles (slope and freedom from satellite particles)
- Selection and reproducibility of powder size distributions
- Particle surface characteristics dictated by optical emissivity oxide levels, moisture and electrostatic charges
MPP understands how these factors are controlled by the atomisation and subsequent classification processes and so can produce feedstock which is optimised for this application.