Novel Approaches for the Production of Polymer Powders for Selective Laser Beam Melting of Polymers

The opening of new fields of application of powder-based additive manufacturing methods like selective laser beam melting of polymers currently is hindered by the limited availability of materials showing good processability. So far, virtually only polyamides are available as optimized powder materials. Two innovative methods for production of spherical polymer micro particles for selective laser melting are discussed: The first approach, stirred media milling and rounding, is applicable for a variety of polymers. It will be exemplarily discussed for polyesters and the dependency of product properties (particle size distribution, shape, crystallinity) on the process parameters in the comminution and in the rounding step will be assessed. The second method, melt emulsification, will be demonstrated for polypropylene. Moreover, the possibilities of dry coating to tailor particle properties are illustrated. The influence of powder properties on the processability and on the quality of the obtained devices is outlined.