Microscopy in Additive Manufacturing: A Focus on Powder Characterization

Additive manufacturing opens up new possibilities in design and manufacture of structural components of complex geometries that were never before possible with traditional subtractive techniques. Selective laser melting techniques to directly write 3D patterns is one of the most widely utilized and studied AM technique. The microstructural characteristics of the powder used for the selective melting process, plays the most crucial role in the final part quality and performance. Hence, a thorough analysis of the powder is very important. In this presentation, we take a look at the various advanced microscopy techniques and solutions that ZEISS offers for powder characterization. The talk presents a number of examples from electron and X-ray methods to characterize both powders and fully finished intricate 3D geometry parts produced by AM, both destructively and non-destructively.