Overall Budget: € 50’000
Sectoral Group: EuroAM
Contractor: Fraunhofer IFAM (Bremen, Germany)
The flowability of metal powders is crucial for all powder bed-based Additive Manufacturing processes. To ensure a defined and reproducible flowability of powders and therefore a robust AM process, a comprehensive understanding of the influence of the air humidity on the flowability is crucial. Therefore, the complex interaction between the (intrinsic) powder properties, the absorption of water and the flowability for AM powders will be investigated by HUM-FLOW project.
Contents of the project:
- Definition of 3 different AM powders
- Exposition of the powders at different air humidity levels (30% – 80%) for different exposition durations (up to 4 hours)
- Investigation of the powders regarding their water content (via coulometric analysis) and their flowability (dynamic flowability tests)
- Mixing of one of the powders with different amounts of a flow additive (e.g. Aerosil®) and investigation of the absorption of water and the flowability
- Correlation of the intrinsic powder properties, the absorption of water and the flowability
Documents