Synthesis of titanium powder with cold crucible based induction skull melting gas atomization for additive manufacturing

Recently, additive manufacturing has been rapidly developing in the many fields of manufacturing industry such as aerospace, defense, auto mobile, and medical industry. Titanium (Ti) is regarded as most important material for additive manufacturing because of its high strength to weight ratio and biocompatibility. Synthesis of Ti powder with gas atomization seems a valuable choice over conventional processing routes as far as the powder attributes are concerned. In this study, the authors designed cold crucible based gas atomization system for Ti and Ti based alloys and fabricated Ti powders by optimizing process parameters such as nozzle design, spray angle, gas pressure etc. Detailed characterization was performed to analyze surface morphology, impurity content, microstructure and mechanical properties. It was found out that powder produced through this route has far less impurity content than Ti powder obtained through conventional route. Also, the shape of powder was spherical.