Cleantech company PyroGenesis Canada Inc says that in tests of a sample of titanium powders produced using the company’s patented powder production technology over 90% of the powders analyzed were shown to be below 106μm and over 50% below 45μm.
The test were run by a potential customer, acting as an independent third party, using laser diffraction.
‘These are indeed unprecedented results,’ claimed P Peter Pascali, president and CEO of PyroGenesis. ‘We can think of no other technology that can provide such a particle size distribution. The additive manufacturing (AM) market is currently divided into two principal segments of customers: (i) those that require powders between 15μm and 45μm and (ii) those that require powders between 45μm and 106μm. This independent analysis reflects that the majority of our powder production is within these two sweet spots, and further validates our recent decision to re-enter the AM market and spin-off these capabilities to its existing shareholders.’
PyroGenesis’ titanium powders are small, spherical, and uniform, allowing them to flow like water. In 2015, the company announced that it made improvements to its existing technology, which resulted in the company filing for a provisional patent and re-entering the AM industry to become a supplier of titanium powders.
‘PyroGenesis has, a number of years ago, already produced these small, spherical, uniform, titanium powders for the biomedical industry, particularly for bio-medical implants,’ added Pascali. ‘We stopped producing powders as we could not sell all of the powder produced; however, with the advent of 3D printing, and the demand for titanium powders, such as ours, growing daily, the economics are far too compelling for us to ignore.’
This story is reprinted from material from PyroGenesis, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
