نشریه ریخته گری
پیاپی 133 (بهار 1402)

The expansion of new powder processing industries, such as additive manufacturing, has increased the interest in metal powder production. The initial market of this field is limited to a small number of manufacturers specializing in powder production, and today a wide range of competitors can be considered in part of the supply chain of raw materials for additive manufacturing of powder-based parts. Of course, the standard production of powder also requires issues, which is not a simple task, and in this two-part article, we intend to investigate all aspects from different perspectives. In the first part, the process of atomization or melt spraying and its subsets are studied, and in the following, one of the most common methods of metal powder production, i.e. water atomization, will be disccussed. This technology has a long history and is used to produce a wide range of metal powders for different industrial applications, including press and sintering methods (commercial powder metallurgy), injection molding, and recently raw materials for metal 3D printers.