Description
Abstract: Laser based powder bed fusion is one of the additive fabrication technology methods which have wide potential for applications for industry. Depending on the used material, the powder is one of the cost drivers. A change from gas to water atomized powder can result in significant cost reduction. The investigation of the powder influence was focused on recoating, melting process and resulting component properties. To define the correlation at first it was necessary to characterize chemical, physical, geometrical and technological powder properties depending on different atomization processes as well as the delivered grain size fraction. In a second step, the process parameter setup of the melting process was set to the properties of the 316L powder material and the resulting properties of the melted parts were determined. Water atomized powder results in a lower density. The mechanical are lower, too, but still in the required range of the material standard.
Authors: Simon Jahn, Sebastian Matthes, and Christian Straube
Keywords: PBF, Additive Manufacturing, Water Atomized, Gas Atomized Powder