Alloying Rotating Electrode Atomization

Additive manufacturing with metals has allowed for production of components with internal geometries not possible with traditional machining methods, reduction of buy-to-fly ratios of complex components, and the ability to quickly produce legacy components in-house for the DOD.  Powder feedstock quality and alloy composition is of great importance to component quality, but most research is carried out with standard engineering alloys, for example Ti-6Al-4V or Inconel 718.  The compositions of these alloys are optimized for wrought material, but alloy modifications tailored to the unique processing conditions of additive manufacturing may allow for improvement in component fidelity.  Currently production of custom alloys is a cost-prohibitive endeavor, and NAVAIR seeks a compact, low-cost unit capable of producing powders with arbitrary alloy composition. Triton proposes our novel ARTEA process which will allow for small-scale production of powders of arbitrary chemical composition.  The ARTEA powder making process allows control of particle size distribution and can be readily tailored to the application by adjusting key process parameters.  Alloy composition may be controlled by feeding one or more feedstock materials.  The only liquid metal present in our processing unit is limited to the size of melt pools commonly encountered in traditional welding processes, greatly reducing the size, complexity and cost of the unit.  The small size of the melt pool lends this process to automation and high-production rates rather than batch production.  Additionally, ARTEA allows for alloying of refractory metals such as tantalum and tungsten without the need for master alloy.  Refractory metals powders themselves may be directly produced, which is nearly impossible using traditional melting methods.