Ultra Fine Specialty Products commissions pilot atomiser
March 28, 2022
Ultra Fine Specialty Products, LLC, an affiliate of Novamet Specialty Products Corporation, reports that its manufacturing site in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, USA, has installed capabilities to produce pilot quantities of gas atomised powders. This is expected to enable the development of custom alloys based on iron, cobalt, nickel, and copper for Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) and Binder Jetting (BJT) Additive Manufacturing, as well as Metal Injection Moulding (MIM).
Ultra Fine Specialty Products’ pilot and production atomisers utilise a unique gas atomisation process to produce high-purity spherical metal powders with tightly sized particle distributions (d90 <30 µm) to meet customers’ stringent specifications for MIM and metal Additive Manufacturing, particularly applicable to BJT.
The newly commissioned pilot atomiser enables orders of as little as 50 kg, reducing the amount of material that customers must purchase for development projects. Upon successful evaluation, quantities can be readily scaled to high volumes on existing production equipment. The pilot equipment will enable the development of technology to further optimise particle size distributions, improve sphericity, and reduce satellites to facilitate the growth of these processes.
Ultra Fine Specialty Products was purchased on June 30, 2020, from Carpenter Technology by a group of investors affiliated with Novamet. Novamet Specialty Products Corporation was formed in 1976 to apply technology to the development of nickel-base powders with unique morphologies, shapes, and sizes. The company currently processes and distributes various metal powders and coated products for the MIM, aerospace, automotive, coatings, and electronic materials markets.