PREP Powder

PREP Powder

1.About PREP

・PREP is Plasma Rotating Electrode Process

・The PREP is a metal powdering process in which metal droplets at the tip of an electrode melted by plasma are pulverized by scattering at a rotational angular velocity.

・In the PREP method, the metal is powdered under atmospheric pressure conditions and there is no gas entrainment in the metal droplets, so be known as a powder character of "less gas-pore inside the powder", "high sphericity", "no satellite powder". However, also has been considered an expensive powder due to productivity challenges.

・We have been promoting development and commercialization of PREP powder for AM through joint research with Chiba Laboratory, Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University.

Currently, JAMPT's PREP system use a material (electrode rod) of φ70 mm and realizes powder production of 30 to 150 μm by powdering operation under the condition at 20,000 rpm.

PREP

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  JAMPT’s PREP system（Start operation from Nov 2018）

2.Superior character of PREP powder

Character	PREP powder
Sphericity	◎
Inner Gas-pore	No
Satellite powder	No
Fluidity	High
Powder Image (SEM)

3.Benefit of PREP powder in AM

Stability

PREP powder is homogeneous in its shape due to high sphericity and lacks satellite powder.Thus it enables to improve stability of powder-bed in PBF printing.This is expected to increase the reproductivity of the quality of the printed parts.

Parameter optimization

PREP powder has high fluidity and a stable particle size distribution.It enables to form a powder-bed with a higher density.Therefore, due to the stability and the high density of powder-bed, it is possible to print parts with a higher density through parameter optimization.By optimizing the printing parameters with PREP powder, JAMPT has achieved the density of 99.999% (Ti64 alloy).

Fatigue strength

PREP powder has almost no gas pore inside, so even as-printed material has high fatigue characteristics equal to or better than the printed material with HIP treatment (about 600Mpa at Ti64 alloy).By skipping the heat treatment process, it is also possible to maintain high tensile strength by maintaining a fine structure.