| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2022 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Powder Materials Processing and Fundamental Understanding
|
| Presentation Title |
NOW ON-DEMAND ONLY - Optical Analysis of Powder Oxygen Content in Metal Powder Bed Fusion |
| Author(s) |
Tan-Phuc Le, Xiaogang Wang, Nick Weeks, Matteo Seita |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Tan-Phuc Le |
| Abstract Scope |
Powder recycling is key to reducing material wastage and improving the sustainability of powder bed fusion processes. However, the quality of the powder is known to progressively decrease as it is recycled due to particle oxidation and to the incorporation of other contaminants, which have detrimental effects on part quality. In this work, we employ a “powder bed scanner” to capture particle-level resolution, colored-images of different powder batches, which we use to assess the particle oxidation state in recycled powder. Because particles change color as they are exposed to the high processing temperature, we devise a numerical image analysis technique to quantify the fraction of oxidized particles and correlate it to the actual oxygen content, benchmarked by inert gas fusion measurements. Our method provides a rapid and inexpensive means to estimate the ‘age’ of recycled powders and inform powder mixing strategies to maintain powder feedstock consistency and build quality. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Additive Manufacturing, Characterization, Powder Materials |