In recent years it has opened dedicated research centres to 3D printing, and has also opened a number of production plants around the world focused on the development of metal additive manufacturing materials. AM powders developed with properties to provide specific solutions that meet the requirements and expectations of our customers. VIM furnaces are installed directly above the atomiser to increase capacity and powders obtained are usually spherical with particle sizes suitable for the AM process. Once melted, powders are sieved into two sizes – 0.015 mm – 0.045 mm and 0.045 mm – 0.150 mm. Each batch of powder after atomisation is further assigned its own heat number and material certificate that incorporates the chemistry, particle size distribution and aspect ratio. During gas atomisation, a test sample of the current powder is sent to the test lab for analysis. The analysis includes the morphology/rheology of the powder particles, porosity, flow rate, density and particle size measurements.

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