Beware the Devil Particle

Jon Lawson

Consultants at The Wolfson Centre find themselves increasingly engaged in powder-related issues related to additive manufacturing. As industry ramps up its adoption of this new technology some unexpected production issues often come to light. In many cases the storage and transfer of the powders holds far more challenges than designers of the systems anticipated.  Issues such as loss of homogeneity, flow inconsistency, excessive particle degradation through recycling systems, etc. This can lead to processing problems and downtime, and ultimately to a potential loss of productivity. One tiny ‘devil particle’ can halt production by contaminating the batch so it is important to understand how and why this might occur.

By combining the working knowledge of experts already in the field of additive manufacturing such as LPW Technology and the Fraunhofer Institute IFAM, with experts in the science of powder handling technology from the Wolfson Centre at the University of Greenwich, the result is a comprehensive programme of lectures spanning two days, designed to explain the critical aspects of powder handling and management for powder-based AM, how variation in product quality attributable to powders develop and how to avoid or overcome these problems.