Sinclair Chad W, Edinger Ralf, Sparling Will, Molavi-Kakhki Amin, Labrecque Chantal
Department of Materials Engineering, The University of British Columbia, 309-6350 Stores Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
CANMORA TECH Inc., Richmondm, BC V6X 3M1, Canada.
Materials (Basel). 2021 Jun 25;14(13):3548. doi: 10.3390/ma14133548.
Commercial powder bed fusion additive manufacturing systems use re-coaters for the layer-by-layer distribution of powder. Despite the known limitations of re-coaters, there has been relatively little work presented on the possible benefits of alternative powder delivery systems. Here, we reveal a feeding technology that uses vibration to control flow for powder bed additive manufacturing. The capabilities of this approach are illustrated experimentally using two very different powders; a 'conventional' gas atomized Ti-6Al-4V powder designed for electron beam additive manufacturing and a water atomized Fe-4 wt.% Ni alloy used in powder metallurgy. Single layer melt trials are shown for the water atomized powder to illustrate the fidelity of the melt tracks in this material. Discrete element modelling is next used to reveal the mechanisms that underpin the observed dependence of feed rate on feeder process parameters and to investigate the potential strengths and limitations of this feeding methodology.
商用粉末床熔融增材制造系统使用再涂覆器进行粉末的逐层分布。尽管再涂覆器存在已知的局限性，但关于替代粉末输送系统可能带来的益处的研究相对较少。在此，我们揭示了一种利用振动来控制粉末床增材制造粉末流动的送料技术。使用两种截然不同的粉末通过实验说明了这种方法的能力；一种是为电子束增材制造设计的“传统”气体雾化Ti-6Al-4V粉末，另一种是粉末冶金中使用的水雾化Fe-4 wt.% Ni合金。展示了水雾化粉末的单层熔化试验，以说明该材料中熔道的保真度。接下来使用离散元建模来揭示支撑观察到的进料速率对送料器工艺参数依赖性的机制，并研究这种送料方法的潜在优势和局限性。
