Feedstock is one of the most critical aspects in Metal Additive Manufacturing, that affects and determines component and process quality and repeatability. Qualification of components is significantly dependent among other things, on characteristics of the feedstock and how the alteration of these characteristics over repeated usage can be measured and controlled.

Most common forms of feedstock used in Metal Additive Manufacutring are wire or powder, with powder being the predominating option. Metal powders are consumed by AM processes such as Laser or Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion, Directed Energy Deposition and Binder Jetting, albeit with different characteristics. General methods of powder production for metal AM are plasma atomization, gas atomization, and the plasma rotation electrode process (PREP).

There are a host of influences that can alter powder characteristics from batch to batch including production process variations, packing, storage and repeat usage. Characteristics such as flowability, apparent density, particle size distribution, morphology (shape, size, roughness) and quality of particles (such as satellites and internal porosity) impact, the quality of powder spread, packing efficiency, sintering kinetics, energy absorption and eventually result in unexpected process performance and part quality. As such continuous measurement and where possible, control of key feedstock characteristics is a mandatory practice that we at Wipro3D follow, using state of the art equipment.