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

几种增材制造（AM）技术正在成为制造商实现先进和性能更高的工业零件的可用技术。影响增材制造零件完整性的主要因素之一是初始材料的质量，更具体地说，是粉末床熔化过程中粉末材料的质量。了解和表征粉末被认为是一个关键和必要的努力。Equispheres （EQS）位于大渥太华地区，是制造用于增材制造和金属喷涂涂层的超高性能球形金属粉末的全球领导者。EQS生产自由流动，均匀，单粒，无团聚的球形金属粉末，带来卓越的控制和性能效率，目前在市场上不可用。粉末粒度分布窄，球形度好，流动性好，无需筛分，旨在显著提高终端产品和应用的质量。本CRD提案的目的是进一步了解一系列铝粉成分的独特特性，从完善的配方（建立基线）到更多尚未研究过的开发合金，以更好地执行铝合金成分工程。该提案还寻求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.