Introduction to the Additive Manufacturing Powder Metallurgy Supply Chain

By J. Dawes, Robert L. Bowerman, Ross Trepleton. 2015

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The supply chain for metal powders used in additive manufacturing (AM) is currently experiencing exponential growth and with this growth come new powder suppliers, new powder manufacturing methods and increased competition. The high number of potential supply chain options provides AM service providers with a significant challenge when making decisions on powder procurement. This paper provides an overview of the metal powder supply chain for the AM market and aims to give AM service providers the information necessary to make informed decisions when procuring metal powders. The procurement options are categorised into three main groups, namely: procuring powders from AM equipment suppliers, procuring powders from third party suppliers and procuring powders directly from powder atomisers. Each of the procurement options has its own unique advantages and disadvantages. The relative importance of these will depend on what the AM equipment is being used for, for example research, rapid prototyping or productionisation. The future of the metal AM powder market is also discussed.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aad2b4e03bf29690132e32b922163b475e1ecd42

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In Automotive Engineering

1. D. Herzog
2. E. Wycisk
3. V. Seyda
4. C. Emmelmann
5. W. Wong
6. J. Tan
7. Kenneth W. Dalgarno

In Mechanical Engineering

1. D. Herzog
2. E. Wycisk
3. V. Seyda
4. C. Emmelmann
5. W. Wong
6. J. Tan
7. Kenneth W. Dalgarno

Citations in the corpus

• Additive manufacturing of metals (2016, background): “The size of the particles produced by EIGA is equivalent to particle sizes of water atomized powders, irrespective of the material [44].”
• An overview of powder granulometry on feedstock and part performance in the selective laser melting process (2017, methodology): “Another method used to measure powder surface area refers to the Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) analysis which determine the amount of physical adsorption on particle surfaces via the displacement of adsorbate gas allowing the total surface area of a powder mass to be evaluated [16].”