Efficient and Sustainable Production of Spherical Metal Powders | METALPINE
Dr. Martin Dopler
METALPINE
A reliable quality of the metal powders is decisive for the success of additive manufacturing technologies. Perfectly spherical, satellite-free and pore-free powders increase printing speed and decrease the number of defects in the printed parts.
Powder producers struggle with a low product yield for the requested narrow particle size distributions as well as high production costs due to bad energy conversion during the atomization process. Additionally, inert gas consumption (Argon or Nitrogen) is costly and further increases carbon footprint of the whole additive process chain.
During the past 5 years, METALPINE & HTM developed a continuous powder production process with a product yield of usually more then 65% for Powder Bed Fusion processes, while inert gas consumption is reduced by more than 75%.With its dust-emission-free process, METALPINE created new environmental standards in metal powder production.
The first production plant of METALPINE GmbH – located in Graz in the south-east of Austria – has got a yearly capacity of 100 tons and the possibility to produce all kind of alloys. Starting with copper alloys and stainless steels, also nickel based alloys, titanium alloys or refractory metals can be atomized with the same production plant.