Atomization is a century-old technology that manufactures metal powders for industrial applications using various powder consolidation techniques. Atomization are of two main kinds – Water and gas atomization processes – these are widely used because of productivity, flexibility, and cost. The manufacturing industries actively pursued powder metallurgy processes in the 1970s for manufacturing components on a large scale and the water atomization process took the lead. Gas atomization technology has also existed for a long time, however it is seriously sought for large-scale production only post-commercialization of the additive manufacturing (AM) process.
The AM process, particularly laser powder bed fusion (LBPF) technology, demands spherical and narrow particle size distribution powder for better flowability and good packing efficiency. This quality is achievable by gas and plasma atomization processes. Though there are many gas atomization processes (air melting gas atomization, vacuum melting gas atomization with crucible and without crucible), the process selection purely depends on the industry application.
For commercial and general automotive and industrial engineering applications where the gaseous content is not critical, the air-melting gas atomization process is widely preferred because of cost advantages. When the scale of criticality increases in powder quality, this technique shifts to vacuum melting (with or without a crucible) since it gives a highly clean and less gaseous content powder that is preferred for high temperature and highly sensitive applications.
At INDO-MIM, we manufacture metal powders for vacuum melt and air melt gas atomization processes to produce a high-spherical powder that is suitable for metal injection molding, and additive manufacturing (LBPF and Binder-jetting processes). We manufacture 120+ variants of powder with the capability of customized chemistry and size distribution. Being a strong metallurgical company with three decades of experience in the powder metallurgy industry, we have succeeded in developing powder that is suited for end application with excellent quality assurance. Our system is capable of handling ferrous, nickel, cobalt, and its alloy powder. We have been serving global customers in diverse application segments.
Now we have named our powders for easy understanding based on their applications. For example, INDO-SPHERE powders for Additive manufacturing and INDO-FUSION powders for Thermal Spray application.
