Metal Powders Industry Concerns

Demands for advanced metal powders require higher specifications and even greater control of production parameters. There is pressure to deliver finer powders with: controlled, tight and reproducible particle size distributions; rapid solidification processing characteristics; and high levels of purity.

Key characteristics of metal powders include the particle size distribution, particle shape, the structure of the powder and its surface condition. These impact bulk properties such as flowability, reactivity, compressibility, porosity and hardenability which all improve as the particle size gets smaller.

The particle size distribution is important to the end user in many ways:

• Influences finished product quality
• Impacts on the ease and efficiency of filling a die
• Wide size distributions allow voids between larger particles to be filled with smaller particles
• Changes porosity as fine particles leave smaller pores that are easily closed during the sintering process
• An excess of fines has negative effects on flow properties
• Affects caking, environmental contamination, and pyrophoricity