Characterization of TC4 Alloy Powder Prepared by EIGA for Laser 3D Printing

Abstract Spherical TC4 alloy powder for laser 3D printing have been prepared by the vacuum rotary electrode gas atomization(EIGA), and the characteristics such as particle size distribution, chemical composition, sphericity, phase, hollow sphere ratio, apparent density and flowability of spherical TC4 alloy powder were studied. The results show that the TC4 alloy powder with ideal characteristics was successfully prepared under the optimized process parameters, the morphology of the powder is mainly spherical and its sphericity reaches 98%, the phase is composed of α′-Ti single solid solution, the main particle size distribution is 1~150 μm, and the hollow sphere rate is 3%. The chemical composition of the TC4 alloy powder meets the requirements of industrial standards and the TC4 alloy powder has low oxygen content of 0.106%.The apparent density of alloy powder with 54~150 µm is 2.648 g/cm 3 , and the flowability is 25.7 s/50g. The characteristics of the TC4 alloy powder prepared by this EIGA method meet the requirements of laser 3D printing high-quality TC4 alloy.