Fabrication and Analysis of Vanadium-Based Metal Powders for Selective Laser Melting

Abstract

Vanadium Alloy is a type of advanced nuclear material with many ideal properties compared as traditional nuclear materials, which has very wide and important application in first-wall and blanket structural material for fusion power plant applications. So it has attracted increasing attentions, especially on new manufacturing methods, such as selective laser melting and so on. In this paper, the comparative study of the powders obtained by mechanical mixing method, dry grinding method and wet grinding method respectively was performed to evaluate the effect of ball milling process on the micro-structure and degree of alloying of the vanadium-based powder mixtures with the nominal composition of V 5 Cr 5 Ti vanadium alloy. The powders prepared by dry grinding method exhibits better spherical-like morphology and degree of alloying than those prepared by mechanical mixing method and wet grinding method, which indicates that dry grinding method can be used to prepare the superfine vanadium alloy powders for selective laser melting. This work provides a new method as well as important insights into the preparation of superfine vanadium alloy powders for selective laser melting additive manufacturing technology.