3D Shape Analysis of Powder for Laser Beam Melting by Synchrotron X-ray CT

Quantum Beam Science

Itziar Serrano-Munoz¹  Tobias Thiede¹  Christian Gollwitzer¹  Giovanni Bruno¹  Sergei Evsevleev¹  Tatiana Mishurova¹ 

[1] Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), Unter den Eichen 87, 12205 Berlin, Germany;

关键词: additive manufacturing;    laser beam melting;    synchrotron computed tomography;    imaging;    powder analysis;   

DOI  :  10.3390/qubs3010003

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The quality of components made by laser beam melting (LBM) additive manufacturing is naturally influenced by the quality of the powder bed. A packing density <1 and porosity inside the powder particles lead to intrinsic voids in the powder bed. Since the packing density is determined by the particle size and shape distribution, the determination of these properties is of significant interest to assess the printing process. In this work, the size and shape distribution, the amount of the particle’s intrinsic porosity, as well as the packing density of micrometric powder used for LBM, have been investigated by means of synchrotron X-ray computed tomography (CT). Two different powder batches were investigated: Ti⁻6Al⁻4V produced by plasma atomization and stainless steel 316L produced by gas atomization. Plasma atomization particles were observed to be more spherical in terms of the mean anisotropy compared to particles produced by gas atomization. The two kinds of particles were comparable in size according to the equivalent diameter. The packing density was lower (i.e., the powder bed contained more voids in between particles) for the Ti⁻6Al⁻4V particles. The comparison of the tomographic results with laser diffraction, as another particle size measurement technique, proved to be in agreement.

【 授权许可】

Unknown