Freeman Technology will present new research at the inaugural conference on Additive Manufacturing with Powder Metallurgy.
The conference from 18-20 May 2014 will run alongside the 2014 World Congress on Powder Metallurgy and Particulate Materials in Orlando, Florida.
While at the event, Freeman Technology will be showing how its FT4 Powder Rheometer can be used to identify metal powders that are conducive to successful performance in an additive manufacturing (AM) process.
AM, also known as 3D printing, involves producing often intricate components to tight specifications by building and binding successive powder layers.
The technique is gaining acceptance for the manufacture of metal components. Successful AM relies heavily on the properties of the raw materials used, which define both process behaviour and the quality of the final product.
However, the analytical methods traditionally employed for powder testing offer only basic data, producing single number parameters that rarely reflect powder behaviour across the range of unit operations used in AM.
In a presentation entitled ‘Accurately Quantifying Process-Relevant Powder Properties for AM’ Mike Delancy, Freeman Technology’s national sales specialist in the US, will discuss recent testing carried out to measure the properties of stainless steel powders intended for AM applications.
In the experiments, the FT4 Powder Rheometer was used to measure dynamic, bulk and shear properties of the powders to fully characterise behaviour.
Clear, repeatable differences were measured between the different powders which were found to correlate directly with their performance in an AM process. The study demonstrates the ability of the FT4 Powder Rheometer to support the identification of an optimal metal powder for specific AM applications.
The FT4 Powder Rheometer will be on show at the Freeman Technology booth (#120) throughout the event.
To find out more about the conference or to register visit www.ampm2014.org
