Users of metal powder based additive manufacturing systems are often afraid of not receiving the right quality. And looking at the bulk of metal powder which shall be put in the machines it is definitely understandable that uncertainties exists:
There are many factors affecting the powder quality and moreover which of them has an influence on the printing result? For many it feels like finding the needle in the haystack when being confronted with the question of potential contaminations which is of major concern when it comes to critical parts especially for aircraft solutions or medical applications.
Aspects like individual quality sense of a supplier, experiences with prior deliveries or pro-active and extensive testing of each new batch can be found within the AM community. Within this presentation a new approach will be explained to overcome the worries by offering statistical based quality-numbers for metal powders.