AMETEK Specialty Metal Products is committed to meeting the demands of Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) for mass-production of industrial components.
We engineer economic AM powder of mainstream stainless steel, nickel, and cobalt alloys for non-rotor-grade components made by Laser Powder Bed, Binder Jet, and Cold Spray processes.
Alloys
As a leader in metal powder production for additive manufacturing, we offer several different alloys and size distributions specifically tailored for different additive manufacturing processes and machines.
The most common additive manufacturing powder materials produced include:
We also offer specialty austenitic and ferritic stainless steels, as well as a selection of nickel and cobalt alloy powders for 3D printing.
Sizes
The above grades are offered in a variety of sizes suitable for various processes of 3D printing metal powder.
- Laser Powder Bed: -325M/+15µm (preferred), -270M/+20µm, additional custom sizes
- Binder Jet: -270M, -325M, -400M, and MIM (d90<22µm) sizes, with high Apparent Density / High Tap Density / High flow versions available
- Cold Spray: -325M, -400M, -500M, -25µm/+10µm, and -20µm/+5µm sizes
Advantages
Our water atomized powders for AM offer exceptional value for materials suitable for industrial applications. Our
stainless,
nickel, and cobalt alloy powders are more economical than Vacuum Induction Gas Atomized (VIGA) powders, and at a scale matching powder metallurgy materials (millions of pounds annually).
We combine the benefits of high volume, highly economic water atomization with 50 years of powder engineering experience to generate rounded, high flow, high Apparent Density and Tap Density materials. Key benefits include:
- High-quality supplier of atomized fine metal
- Water Atomized Powders with size distributions and morphologies optimized for AM
- Exceptional overall value for non-rotor-grade parts
Laser Powder Bed
Our Laser Powder Bed products are engineered to maximize flowability and Apparent Density. In water atomized materials, this means that the preferred size is -325M/+15µm powder as it offers the highest typical Hall Flow rates and packing densities.
|
17-4PH Powders |
316L Powders |
| Typical |
AD (g/cc) |
Hall Flow (s/ 50 g) |
AD (g/cc) |
Hall Flow (s/ 50 g) |
| -325M/ +15µm |
~3.9 |
~18 |
~4.0 |
~16 |
| -270M/ +20µm |
~3.7 |
~20 |
~3.7 |
~21 |
| -200M/ +5µm |
~4.0 |
~22 |
~4.2 |
~21 |
Our
17-4PH® and
316L powders have been printed on several different machines, producing dense parts at standard machine parameters. Yield strength, tensile strength, elongation, and reduction of area tested intermediate to cast and wrought values.
Binder Jet
Perhaps the most interesting AM application for water atomized powders is Binder Jet. The economics of Binder Jet are dictated heavily by powder cost due to the relatively low cost and high print speed of machines.
With high production capacities and low costs, Binder Jet and water atomized powder are a highly desirable combination.
Our Binder Jet materials achieve:
- Apparent Densities ~50% of fully dense
- Tap Densities ~60% of fully dense
- Hall Flows approaching 25s
Development partners printing our materials have achieved densities greater than 95% with standard sintering operations.
Cold Spray
Water Atomized powders have numerous advantages for cold Spray additive manufacturing. The single most important factor is that AMETEK SMP produces high quality, very fine powders in an extremely economic manner for cold spray metal deposition processes . This is due to the much lower overhead and manufacturing costs of water atomization vs. VIGA, which scale with the low yields of very fine and tight cold spray distributions.
Customers have sprayed ferritic steels, austenitic steels, and nickel. Any alloy from our portfolio can be produced in a suitable size distribution for cold spray 3d printing.
AD as a Function of Process
The graph shows the development of high density, high flow materials for Binder Jet
