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

金属粉末用于增材制造（AM）工艺。通过这些工艺，可以生产出具有均匀微观结构和可接受孔隙度的零件。如果粉末的质量是可接受的，则可以定义优化的制造参数以使该工艺具有鲁棒性。目前的技术挑战包括操作具有可变特性的金属粉末的可能性。然后，增材制造中的工艺参数必须适应生产部件的最低使用性能。特别是粉末的粒度分布影响微观结构，影响表面或微观结构中缺陷的比例和最大尺寸。这些缺陷影响机械性能和使用性能。可能需要调整工艺参数，以确保制造的零件处于适当的状态。对于快速生产来说，1)识别和监控金属粉末特性和适当的工艺参数对最终使用性能的影响，2)对制造零件的预期使用性能进行认证是必不可少的。这种结合可以被证明是工业4.0的主要目标。无论使用哪批粉末，都必须具有可重复性和可靠的工艺，并且能够生产具有所需性能的单个部件的批次。因此，这个项目的定义是为了更好地记录上述挑战，并找到解决方案，以增加增材制造的多功能性。

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.