Abstract
Experimental results of the metal powder production with internal mixing, internal impinging and the atomizer coupled with substrate design are presented in this paper. In a test with internal mixing atomizer, mean powder size was decreased from $37{\mu}m\;to\;23{\mu}m$ for Pb65Sn35 alloy as the gas-to-melt mass ratio was increased from 0.04 to 0.17. The particle size further reduces to $16.01{\mu}m$ as the orifice area is increased to $24mm^2$. The micrograph of the metal powder indicates that very fine and spherical metal powder has been produced by this process. In a test program using the internal impinging atomizers, the mean particle size of the metal powder was decreased from $22{\mu}m\;to\;12{\mu}m$ as the gas-to-melt-mass ratio increased from 0.05 to 0.22. The test results of an atomizer coupled with a substrate indicates that the deposition rate of the molten spray on the substrate is controlled by the diameter of the substrate, the height of the substrate ring and the distance of the substrate from the outlet of the atomizer. This in rum determines the powder production rate of the spraying processes. Experimental results indicate that the deposition rate of the spray forming material decreases as the distance between the substrate and the atomizer increases. For example, the deposition rate decreases from 48% to 19% as the substrate is placed at a distance from 20cm to 40cm. On the other hand, the metal powder production rate and its particle size increases as the subsrate is placed far away from the atomizer. The production of metal powder with mean particle size as low as $3.13{\mu}m$ has been achieved, a level which is not achievable by the conventional gas atomization processes.