A Holistic Understanding of Powder Feedstock

Power Bed Fusion (PBF) is one of the most widely used Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques. However, instabilities in the PBF process chain often leads to high scrap rates. Powder characterization is critical for mitigating problems early in the process chain to prevent more costly interventions at a later stage, and reduces time performing failure analysis. As PBF moves from prototyping to serial production, powder quality control becomes even more critical to high throughput.

Powder characterization is part of the ZEISS Blue Line, an integrated solution utilizing a suite of tools including: Light, Electron and X-ray Microscopy, to ensure a holistic understanding of AM powder lots. This comprehensive investigation leads to maximum recyclability and therefore cost savings, while also identifying morphological changes that can affect powder spreadability, contamination that will result in inclusions, and porosity in the powder may lead to porosity in the final part.