Aspects of the Powder in Metal Additive Manufacturing: A Review

Abstract

The most widely used metal additive manufacturing processes utilize powder that is spread or fed onto a building platform. Although there are reviews of the literature on some aspects of the powder, many aspects have been under-reviewed or unreviewed. The present work is a review of the literature on these aspects. Articles published in the open literature through the end of February 2022 were collected by consulting highly regarded relevant bibliographic databases, such as Google Scholar and Science Direct. The aspects reviewed were emerging methods of powder production, methods used to improve the quality of a powder after production by a well-established method, influence of variables of well-established powder production methods on powder properties, influence of powder production method on powder properties, and influence of powder reuse on properties of powders of a wide collection of alloys. One key finding was that with regard to powder reuse, the only consistent finding is that it leads to increase in the oxygen content of the powder. Another key finding was that the literature on the aspects of the literature reviewed herein contains many shortcomings and gaps, which suggest potential areas for future research, such as techniques for optimization of process variables for a given combination of metal powder and powder production method and development of methods for production of powders of new/emerging metallic materials.