Refractory Metals Can Also Be Made Into 3D Printing Materials

Jun 08, 2020

You may have seen 3D printing, but most of it is printed in plastic. Can refractory metals such as tungsten, molybdenum and rhenium be printed in 3D to make objects of various shapes?

Recently, chongqing commercial daily reporter learned from the city science and technology commission, chongqing captured refractory metal materials research institute co., LTD., has made the key technology of 3 d printing materials, they could be prepared for 3 d printing with refractory metal spherical powder, has implemented the batch delivery, even in the implementation of key parts in the field of aerospace applications.

"Materials such as tungsten, molybdenum and rhenium have high melting points, such as tungsten, which has a melting point of 3,410 degrees, making them into spherical powders for 3D printing is very difficult." Chongqing Materials Research Institute Co., LTD., explained, but at the same time, these refractory metals have good high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, high hardness, low coefficient of expansion and other characteristics, widely used in the aerospace field.

It is understood that at present, the relevant equipment and the core technology of metal spherical powder 3D printing are mainly controlled in Germany, the United States, Japan and other countries. The preparation of metal spherical powder has been industrialized, and the technical standard system of powder raw materials and manufacturing products has been established. In recent years, our country in 3 d printing equipment, metal manufacturing process, process control, process stability, etc, have also made significant progress, but the material aspects of the bottleneck problem has not been a major breakthrough, especially super fine 3 d printing refractory metal spherical powder in material purity, sphericity, spheroidizing ratio and batch on indicators such as stability, have a great gap with developed countries, it is hard to meet the pressing needs of our country's aerospace and other high-end manufacturing.

Chongqing Materials Research Institute Co., Ltd. adopts plasma spheroidization technology to rapidly melt dispersed non-spherical powder through the plasma area, and the droplets form spherical due to surface tension, and then rapidly solidify, to prepare fused metal spherical powder for 3D printing. Due to the surface treatment and modification of the powder material, the filling density of the non-spherical powder material is twice as high as that of the non-spherical powder material, the sphericity is more than 90%, the spheroidization rate is more than 85%, and the average particle size is less than 40 m. According to the introduction, at present, it has realized bulk supply, applied in the aerospace field of key components, fill the gap in the preparation of high-quality refractory metal spherical powder.