A technical review of the challenges of powder recycling in the laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing process

Gowtham Soundarapandiyan, Carol Johnston, Raja H.U. Khan, Bo Chen, Michael Fitzpatrick

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Abstract

Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) is one of the most widely used additive manufacturing techniques for fabrication of components with complex geometries for various industrial applications including aerospace, medical and automotive. The unconsumed powder after part manufacturing is often recovered and recycled to improve process efficiency. How- ever, some of the particles in the recycled powder can have different physical and chemical properties from those in the virgin powder owing to their exposure to the complex envi- ronment during the manufacturing process. In addition, some contaminants can be intro- duced in the recycled powder due to poor process control. A number of studies have been published in the past few years revealing the effects ofpowder recycling on the build prop- erties. The present work aims to highlight the key phenomena during the manufacturing process that caused degradation to the recycled powder. Further to this, some comments, gaps
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)97-103
Number of pages7
JournalIET Journal of Engineering
Volume2021
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Jan 2021

Bibliographical note

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Funder

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Grant Number: EP/R043973/1
Lloyd's Register Foundation. Grant Number: GS012018COV

Keywords

  • Additive Manufacturing
  • Laser additive manufacture
  • Powder reuse
  • Powder characteristics

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