Powder Reuse Assessment through Advanced Characterization Techniques for Additive Manufacturing Applications

One of the most promising features provided by additive manufacturing technologies is the possibility to increase significantly the material usage with respect to other conventional techniques. Consequently, powder reuse plays a key role in order to minimize waste. This option is both cost-saving and environmentally friendly. However, the feedstock material might be physically and chemically altered during processing. For example, morphological changes of the particles and consequently variations in the rheological behaviour of the powder might occur. The particles might also be compositionally altered. For instance, the Ti-6Al-4V alloy is significantly susceptible to oxygen enrichment, which results in a severe embrittlement of the material. In this work, the influence of the building process on the chemical and morphological properties of the powders was assessed; conventional (flow and bulk characteristics evaluation) and advanced (rheology, in-depth morphological analyses) techniques were adopted for analysing changes in powders features after their reuse.