Characterization of IN718 recycling powder and its effect on LPBF manufactured parts
Sara Sendino, Silvia Martı́nez, Aitzol Lamíkiz
Abstract
The quality of the powder is a key aspect in the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB/M) process to guarantee manufacturability and quality of the manufactured parts. However, the powder is reused several times and its quality changes during the manufacture process, which affects the quality of the manufactured parts. Throughout this article, the powder and the final part properties will be studied during 25 manufacturing process. Specifically, morphology, granulometry and flowability of the powder were studied, and these results were related with the roughness and the porosity of the manufactured parts. Thanks to this research, it was found that the size of the particles increases when the powder is reused. And this directly affects the flowability of the powder which increases. Furthermore, it has also been shown that this increase in particle size distribution causes an increase in the porosity and roughness of the manufactured parts.