Effects of Titanium alloy powder characteristics on the quality of parts produced by additive manufacturing and how to control them

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Metal powders are used in additive manufacturing (AM) processes. With these processes, parts with uniform microstructure and acceptable porosity levels are produced. If the quality of the powder is acceptable, optimized manufacturing parameters can be defined to make the process robust. Current technical challenges include the possibility of operating metal powders with variable characteristics. The process parameters in AM will then have to be adapted to certify minimum in-service properties for the produced parts. In particular, the particle size distribution of powders influences the microstructure, the fraction and maximum size of defects on the surface or in the microstructure. These defects affect mechanical properties and service performance. The process parameters may need to be adapted to ensure that the manufactured parts are in a proper manner. For rapid production a combination of 1) Identifying and monitoring the effect of metallic powders characteristics and proper process parameters on final service properties and 2) Certifying intended service properties of the manufactured parts is essential. This combination could be demonstrated as main objective of industry 4.0. It is necessary to have reproducible and reliable processes, whatever the batch of powder used, and to be able to produce batches of a single part with the required properties. So, this project is defined in order to better document the challenges mentioned above and find solutions to increase the versatility of additive manufacturing.