Titanium powder is a key raw material in the printing field
In recent years, 3D printing has become a hot technology that has received much attention. It makes plastic, metal and other "printing materials" into real objects by stacking and printing layer by layer, and its application fields are becoming more and more extensive. Among the many "printing materials", metal powder materials have great advantages and development prospects, but the technical difficulty is extremely high, and it has always been a hot spot in the manufacturing industry. Since 2014, the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Research Institute, located in Panzhihua, Sichuan, has started research on spherical titanium powder technology for 3D printing, gradually breaking the foreign monopoly, and has now reached the advanced level of the domestic industry.
Titanium powder is a key raw material in the printing field. Titanium metal has the characteristics of light weight, high strength and corrosion resistance. In recent years, with the development of global 3D printing technology, seemingly inconspicuous titanium and titanium alloy powders have become the key materials to the field of 3D printing of metal parts. Although there are also domestic companies research and development, their preparation technology has been monopolized by foreign companies. At present, titanium and titanium alloy spherical powder printing technology is mainly used in aviation, aerospace, medical equipment, biomedicine and other industries.
In 2017, Panzhihua Iron and Steel Research Institute opened up the process of preparing spherical titanium and titanium alloy powder by gas atomization, and the overall technology and product quality have reached the international advanced level. In 2018, a breakthrough was made in the preparation of spherical titanium alloy powder for laser printing. By 2019, problems such as powder fluidity have been solved, and the product has also been recognized by users. As far as the current market is concerned, spherical titanium powder has a bright future.