A New Approach for a Flexible Powder Production for Additive Manufacturing

The technology of Additive Manufacturing (AM) is an enabler for more eco-friendly lightweight aircraft parts due to the possibility to use the freedom of design. Since the process of laser beam melting is powder bed based, there is a huge influence of the powder quality on the building process. The most common process for the AM powder production is the inert gas atomization based on molten material. There are different process types which are mainly used for a large scale powder production. In order to analyze new or expensive alloys for the AM process, small and flexible atomization plants to produce smaller amounts of powder are needed.This work summarizes the required powder properties for aluminum alloys as well as the different suitable atomization processes. Current challenges concerning AM powder quality will be described and a new atomization plant concept for high-grade powder in small quantities, based on the process of thermal spraying, will be introduced.