Metal powder is a feedstock material used in the majority of metal additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, including powder bed fusion (laser beam PBF-LB, and electron beam - PBF-EB), binder jetting (BJT) and powder blown directed energy deposition (DED). Considering specific challenges of AM processing, tailoring or even totally new design of materials for metal AM is required to assure robust AM processing and defect-free high-performance AM materials. However, very often material design for AM overlooks the importance of powder manufacturing and resulting powder properties on robustness of AM process and resulting microstructure and properties of AM components. Metal powder can be produced by the variety of methods, characterized by different productivity and cost, where variety of powder properties can be obtained for the same alloy system. Further on, metal powder is exposed to the processing conditions that are determined by process parameters and hardware solution and hence differ significantly between different AM technologies. Therefore, not only the properly tailored properties of the virgin powder are relevant for robust AM processing. Understanding of the change in powder properties during AM processing in dependance on AM technology and alloy composition and its impact on final properties of the component is required to assure successful industrial implementation of powder-based metal AM.

This talk summarizes the challenges and outcomes of about 15 novel powder materials developed for powder-based metal AM by CAM2 (Centre for Additive Manufacture – Metal) over the past 5 years, number of which were recently introduced on the market. Importance of tailored alloy design and impact of powder manufacturing and properties on microstructure and properties of the final components for number of Fe- and Ni-base powder materials will be discussed in details.