Elemental Analysis & Metrology for Powder Metallurgy

Powder Metallurgy

Additive Manufacturing (AM), Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) and metal injection molding (MIM) all have one common critical component: metal powders. Typical powders are made through the atomization process of pure metals, such as titanium, aluminum, nickel, copper, or alloys, such as steel, Inconel, and metallic ceramic. Bruker offers the most comprehensive range of instruments for the elemental and compositional analyses of these advanced materials.

Metal Powder Analysis & Characterization

Highlights

The initial quality and the further treatment of the metal powders used for additive manufacturing processes plays an important role in the quality and properties of the final product. Parameters like particle size, distribution and particle morphology are established, but these represent only the “mechanical” part of the characterization, neglecting metallurgical and chemistry effects although particle chemistry impacts the fundamental performance of the final printed or molded parts.

To ensure that the final parts made with these techniques meet the rigorous requirements of medical, automotive, and aerospace applications, metal powders used as inputs must be fully characterized and monitored though out the production cycle: during the powder atomization/production process, upon incoming QA/QC at the part production facility, during storage and part production, and after powder recycling. Especially the powder recycling process on expensive high-end alloy like Ti64, AlSi10Mg is delicate but determines the number of recycling steps and therefore the yield of the entire process.