Researchers from the印度科学学院(IISc) have developed a new abrasion-based method of producing metal powders for 3D printing.
The approach is designed to provide an alternative to atomization, the technique by which most metal powders are currently produced. In atomization, a gas or water jet is used to break up a molten stream of metal into tiny droplets, which form powder particles once cooled.
不幸的是，尽管它是该行业的黄金标准，但基于雾化的粉末生产可能会遭受材料的不良收益率，但它可能具有成本上的影响，并且仅与有限的金属兼容。IISC方法旨在解决这些缺点。
Priti Ranjan Panda, a Ph.D. student at IISc’s Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, said, “We have an alternative, more economical and inherently scalable route for making metal powders, and the quality of the final powders appear to be very competitive when compared with conventional gas atomized powders.”
金属磨粉生产
In the manufacturing sector, the waste material removed from metal grinding processes is known as swarf. These metal chippings are often in the shape of long, thin strips, but they can also include spherical powder particles.
According to the IISc team, it’s long been thought that these spherical swarf particles undergo melting during the grinding process, which is what makes them perfect spheres in the first place. As such, the researchers theorized that they could apply metal grinding, an abrasion-based process, to the production of 3D printing powders.
The study showed that melting due to high heat from oxidation does indeed cause the formation of powdered metal particles via an exothermic reaction at the surface of a metal. The researchers refined the grinding approach and optimized it to produce large quantities of steel 3D printing powder, which they claim offers comparable performance to commercial gas atomized counterparts. The grinding technique is also significantly more cost-effective than gas atomization.
The need for cost-efficient metal powders
Koushik Viswanathan, lead author of the study, states that there’s been great recent interest in adopting metal 3D printing due to the technology’s customization and design freedom benefits. However, the costly nature of today’s metal powders has proven to be a hurdle for many companies, so there’s still a need for cheaper and more accessible powders.
Harish Singh Dhami, co-author of the study, adds, “Reducing the cost of the AM process (via economical powders) can widen the range of materials in situations such as manufacturing of biomedical implants, which could become cheaper and more accessible.”
此外，该小组认为，他们基于磨损的方法在其他高性能工业应用中也具有潜力，包括航空航天发动机的零件。
更多细节的研究可以发现paper titled‘Production of powders for metal additive manufacturing applications using surface grinding’。
粉末状3D打印材料的行业一如既往地活跃。就在最近，瑞典的材料公司Gränges Powder Metallurgylaunched its very first additive manufacturing powder. Developed as part of the company’s DISPAL family of materials,AM S220（ALSI35）是高性能的铝合金suitable for laser powder bed fusion. The material is characterized by its high stiffness, low thermal expansion, excellent wear and tear behavior, good machinability, and low density.
Elsewhere,Infinite Flex, a Germany-based developer of smart materials, recently launched what it claims to be theworld’s first pure copper powder for SLM 3D printing。该材料已被称为Infinite Powder Cu 01，已经在许多标准SLM 3D打印机（例如雷电竞app下载EOS M290andTrumpf Truprint 1000, and is now commercially available.
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Featured image shows steel 3D printing powder produced using surface grinding. Image via IISc.
