Linking powder quality to part quality for Mg-containing monodisperse Al powders

几种增材制造（AM）技术正逐渐成为制造商实现先进和性能更高的工业零件的可用技术。影响AM部件完整性的主要因素之一是起始材料的质量，更具体地说是粉末床熔融工艺中的粉末材料。粉末的理解和表征被认为是一个关键和必要的努力。Equispheres（EQS），位于大渥太华地区，是一个世界领先的制造超高性能球形金属粉末的AM和金属喷涂工程。EQS生产自由流动、均匀、单颗粒、无团聚的球形金属粉末，这些粉末带来了目前市场上无法获得的上级控制和性能效率。这些粉末具有窄的粒度分布、优异的球形度和流动性，无需筛分，旨在显著提高最终用途产品和应用的质量。该CRD提案的目的是进一步了解一系列Al粉末成分的独特特性，范围从成熟的配方（以建立基线）到之前尚未检查的更先进的合金，以更好地执行Al合金成分工程。该提案还旨在测量由其优化粉末制成的零件的静态和动态特性，并努力在粉末特性和后处理方面获得新的见解，以提高零件性能。

Several additive manufacturing (AM) technologies are becoming available to manufacturers to realize advanced and more performing industrial parts. One of the main factors influencing the integrity of AM parts is the quality of the starting material, and more specifically powdered materials in powder bed fusion processes. Understanding and characterization of the powders is recognized as a critical and necessary effort. Equispheres (EQS), located in the greater Ottawa area, is a world leader in fabrication of ultra-high-performance spherical metal powders engineered for AM and Metal Spray Coatings. EQS produces free-flowing, uniform, monograin, agglomerate-free spherical metal powders, which bring superior control and performance efficiencies that are currently unavailable in the marketplace. The powders have a narrow particle size distribution, excellent sphericity and flowability, without sieving, and are designed to significantly improve the quality of end-use products and applications. The purpose of this CRD proposal is to further understand the unique characteristics for an array of Al powder compositions ranging from well-established formulations (to establish a baseline) to more developmental alloys that have not been examined before to better perform Al alloy composition engineering. The proposal also seeks at measuring the static and dynamics properties of parts made from their optimized powders and to strive for new insights in powder characteristics and post-processing to increase parts performance.