Equispheres launches three new lines of aluminum powders

Aluminum alloy powder.

OTTAWA — Equispheres launches a new line of powder products that can be bundled with advanced engineering services to assist customers in achieving results for specialty metal additive manufacturing applications. The three new powders are variations on the original aluminum alloy that have each been engineered to offer features for either increased print precision, enhanced printed part strength, or faster print speed and volume.

“Equispheres’ proprietary atomization process is carefully controlled and can be managed with precision,” says Dr. Conlon, CTO at Equispheres. “Powder features such as PSD (particle size distribution), morphology, and chemistry can be optimized to achieve specific behaviour in the laser melting process and to meet defined application requirements.”

In addition to the original atomized AlSi10Mg powder Equispheres produces, the new metal powder products include:

• Equispheres Performance – powder designed to provide enhanced printed part strength and performance across a wide range of applications and that achieves a 20-30% increase in the a-basis design allowable over traditional powders.
• Equispheres Precision – powder designed to support applications where fine features and precision (as related to CAD design) are of paramount importance. This powder has proven to provide a 50 % improvement in dimensional accuracy.
• Equispheres Production – powder designed to reduce the cost per part manufactured, with features designed to facilitate the rapid production of items without compromising mechanical performance. The company is working on parameter sets to increase production speeds by 3 to 4 times.

“The unique nature of the Equispheres powder requires the use of special printer parameters to achieve the best outcomes,” states Evan Butler-Jones, Director of Applications Engineering. “Our research team has been working with our industrial partners in automotive and aerospace to arrive at the optimal methods for the application of our powder. For new customers that knowledge on how to best use the powder is just as important as having the powder itself, which is why we now offer engineering service to facilitate the implementation of the powder into production.”