Characterization of AM Metal Powder with an Industrial Microfocus CT: Potential and Limitations

This study demonstrates that, after adequate scaling error compensation, industrial µ-CT could be a viable metrological technique to derive, with one measurement, primary characteristics of Additive Manufacturing metal powders used in Powder Bed Fusion processes. For distribution and shape analyses, special care must be employed on the ISO value determination prior to surface extraction. The current main limitation relies on the finite focal spot size of the µ-CT X-ray source and consequently on the limited spatial resolution. A local thresholding method has been proposed for surface determination and its statistical validation must be done at different µ-CT scan settings and with different powder specimens. The potential for detecting powder cross-contamination and eventually powder degradation has been introduced and will be the main effort in future studies.More info at: http://aspe.net/technical-meetings/2018-summer-topical-meeting/status: publishe