Enabling growth of metal powder sales by flowability standardization

Purpose and goal

All project goals have been met. Firstly, the state of standardisation in the field of characterisation of metal powders for additive manufacturing was assessed and areas in which there are a lack of standards were identified. Secondly, data were collected by surveying companies involved in powder metallurgy and additive manufacturing in Sweden. The results were then summarised. Finally, experiments were performed to understand the usefulness of techniques for which standards may be developed. A new comprehensive industry-funded project FlowSpread will continue the work.

Expected results and effects

The current standards for metal powder flowability were studied. There are standard for measuring the properties of static powders, but not for moving powders. Surveys of relevant companies took place over the spring and summer of 2019. A total of eleven organisations provided data. There was little agreement in current practice or desired standards, but powder spreadability emerged as a critical property that must be measured in a standardised way. Experiments showed that standardisation may be possible, but more work is needed to find the most useful test methods.

Planned approach and implementation

The project was divided into three work packages, each of which involved a separate activity. Since KTH possesses the majority of equipment for which new standards were expected to be requested by industry, more of the experimental work was expected to be performed at KTH. Both KTH and Swerim had performed the surveys. This structure worked well. However, the surveys were performed in the summer of 2019. There were large conferences late in 2019 that would have provided an opportunity to collect more international data. Now mostly Swedish organisations were included in the surveys.