The powder spreadability drives largely the robustness of powder-bed-based additive manufacturing processes (laser powder bed fusion / L-PBF and binder jetting / BJ) as well as the performance of the printed parts such as geometric conformity or part porosity. However, the current methods to characterized metal powders in AM processes (e.g. powder apparent density or flowability) are not well assessing the required powder behavior during a spreading stage.

This study is relying on the development of a fully automated and instrumented spreading bench, aiming to be representative of a wide range of AM machines, in particular by changing the spreading tool from a blade (flexible or rigid) to a rotating roller. The bench gives an overview of the powder layer quality by measuring the powder layer roughness by laser profilometry and determining the layer apparent density thanks to an in-situ weight of each powder layer.