Processing of Metallic Scrap Materials for Battlefield Additive Manufacturing

Our proposal provides the opportunity to develop a brand new process for the manufacture of additive manufacturing powder.Our project will combine induction heating and Lorenz force levitation to create and suspend a molten charge.This charge will be shaped as it leaves the melt chamber to form a stream.This stream will then be accelerated using Lorenz forces to a speed at which the cohesive forces are overcome and droplets form through burst atomization.The droplets will subsequently cool in a chamber where they will lose their latent heat of solidification and cool as powder.The nature of the de-gassing and subsequent atomization process is expected to produce uniform, high quality, spherical powder.Our system will be designed for continuous operation when working in conjunction with a system capable of feeding discrete quantities of base material into the melt chamber.When complete, it is expected that we will have developed a new generation of powder manufacturing machines that can be placed alongside existing additive manufacturing units to manufacture powder.