Caratterizzazione di polveri rapidamente solidificate per processi di Manifattura Additiva

Additive Manufacturing technologies have been used since the 90s and their application in the manufacturing of parts for final products has grown from almost nothing to more than 28% of the total global product and service revenues in the lasts 10 years. Nowadays it is utilized in aerospace, automotive, biomedical fields and also in consumer products and military. Additive Manufacturing technologies have the potential to change the paradigm for manufacturing, from mass production in large factories with dedicated tooling and high costs, to a world of mass customization and distributed manufacture. Additive Manufacturing can be used anywhere in the product life cycle from pre-production prototypes to full-scale production, as well as for tooling applications or post production repair. Almost all classes of material can be processed through Additive Manufacturing techniques (polymers, ceramics, composites¿), even if our attention is focused on metals. In this work three different metal systems are discussed. The initial goal was to compare the acquired knowledges on a gas atomized AlSi10Mg powder provided by EOS with a rapidly solidified powder obtained in laboratory through Melt Extraction technique. Instrument tuning and several attempts took three months of work with poor results from the efficiency point of view. Then, a company producing atomizers provide us a silver powder and a bronze alloy powder (CuSn10), both produced with a gas atomization machine. We decided to investigate the properties and the microstructure of these two systems for a possible employment in Additive Manufacturing applications. The characterization includes optical and electron microscopy, thermal analysis and diffraction experiments to investigate as much as possible the powders characteristics, which strongly affect the final product properties.