Additive Manufacturing Process Quality, The Role of the Powder Feedstock

The University of Liverpool Additive Manufacturing Research Group have a studentship available for an October 2018 start at the EPSRC CDT in Additive manufacturing.

The CDT delivers a four-year PhD training programme. It includes specific training in AM and 3DP methods and techniques, and the opportunity to attend international study tours. All students are part of a cohort, which encourages interdisciplinary research, innovative thinking and a supportive learning environment. Each PhD project has a specific link to an industrial partner, supported by a minimum three-month industrial internship.

The Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) has been successful in attracting significant funding from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) to support our innovative and comprehensive training programme.

AM has been maturing at a rapid rate, but uptake by safety critical industries is hampered by missing links between powder properties and final part performance. The relationship between AM process quality, optimization and process success is thought to be fundamentally linked to the input powder feedstock. This obvious statement belies the complexity inherent in the relationship between the feedstock and the final part. Several novel and simple methodologies to assess powder feedstock quality have been developed by LPW but the direct link from these measurements to process quality has not been established.

The aim of this 4-year project is to quantify the link between the measured powder properties, more standard measures of powder quality and finally the process and produced part

Project Sponsor LPW - https://www.lpwtechnology.com/