Researchers at Politecnico di Torino publish on metal powder cross-contamination analysis
Researchers at Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy, have published a paper in Materials & Design entitled ‘Ultraviolet–Visible-Near InfraRed spectroscopy for assessing metal powder cross-contamination: A multivariate approach for a quantitative analysis’ focusing on assessing three binary systems obtained from the cross-contamination of three components, A92618, C10200 and S31603, in a low contamination range, from 0.5 vol% to vol. 6%, and in a high contamination range of 25 vol% and vol. 50%.
The last few years have seen increasing use of spherical metal powders to produce bulk parts through metal-forming technologies like Additive Manufacturing and Metal Injection Molding, the authors state. This, paired with the wide availability of metal powders, leads to a critical issue: contamination across different systems in different process steps. As a result, it is necessary to find a new, faster, and more reliable analysis sensitive to traces of contamination.
This work by Politecnico di Torino researchers evaluates the applicability of Ultraviolet-Visible-Near-InfraRed (UV-Vis-NIR) spectroscopy, a technique providing information on powders’ reflectance, for studying contaminated powders.
After the UV-Vis-NIR analysis, multivariate analysis has been used to obtain quantitative results. The results show that, as the contamination level increases in the binary system, the shape of spectra changes and becomes progressively more similar to the contaminant one. The chemometric analysis allows for the detection of the contaminant type and its concentration percentage in the contaminated powder.
Read the full paper here.
