Manipulation and Characterization of Novel Titanium Powder for Additive Manufacturing Applications

Additive manufacturing (AM) processes such as electron beam melting (EBM), laser beam melting (LBM) and cold spray are the new frontier of metal manufacturing industries. One of the drawbacks of the AM processes is that they require specific particle size distributions and morphologies of the metal powders. In case of titanium (Ti) powder, current powder manufacturing processes such as gas atomization (GA) or hydride-dehydride (HDH) are very expensive or produce unfavourable particle morphology for AM processes. In order to produce low cost fine powder with favourable morphology for AM processes, it was suggested to manipulate low cost Ti sponge using a CSIRO proprietary technique. For assessing the performance of the manipulated powder, particle size distribution, microstructure and roundness analysis were measured and compared with a benchmark powder in the form of fresh and recycled Arcam Ti-6Al-4V powder. The flowability before and after manipulation was measured by the Hall Funnel flowmeter (ASTM B855-06). Static angle of repose (AOR), apparent density and tap density before and after such manipulation were also measured and compared. The universal powder bed (UPB) system was used to characterize the powder behavior after raking. The UPB was developed by CSIRO to study powder flowability requirement prior to actual AM use. It consists of an identical powder bed system to that in an Arcam A1 EBM machine. It offers a quick and efficient method for assessing powder behaviour in AM processes.