Principal investigator: Anthony D. Rollett, Amir Mostafaei, Amit Verma

University: Carnegie Mellon University

Industry partners: The ExOne Company

In powder based additive manufacturing, both feedstock and 3D printing process significantly affect the final cost of the component. Production of irregularly shaped powder via metal attrition or water atomization is cheaper and faster than gas atomized powder with spherical morphology. Spherical particles are assumed to give better powder flowability and higher packing density resulting in higher densification and mechanical strength. Counterintuitively, the team will show that angular powder can be a good candidate for binder jetting (BJ) of structural materials (steel or nickel alloys). Among additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, binder-jetting is promising because it is fast, low-cost, and it produces stress-free structures with complex internal/external geometries. The properties of the final parts are also isotropic. The ExOne Company and the Barnes Advisory Group will partner with CMU to evaluate part production from Metal Attrition Powder using BJ, thereby bolstering the southwest PA economy and supporting the strong existing tissue engineering activity via scaffolds for tissue growth.