A novel method for production of spherical Ti-6Al-4V powder for additive manufacturing

A novel method was developed to produce spherical Ti-6Al-4V powder for advanced near-net-shape manufacturing processes including additive manufacturing and powder injection molding. The new process synergistically integrates a few common low-cost processing techniques including granulation, sintering, and de-oxygenation to produce spherical Ti alloy powders without relying on costly melting and atomizing techniques. This new granulation-sintering-deoxygenation (GSD) process can use low-cost source powders such as scrap Ti as the raw material. The spherical Ti-6Al-4V powder produced using this process has controlled particle size distribution and low oxygen content (<0.15%), which meet the Aerospace Material Specification (AMS-4998) for spherical Ti-6Al-4V powder. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.