The preparation of spherical tin bronze alloy powder via the flash remelting spheroidization method

Spherical metal powder is an essential material for several advanced manufacturing industry. The methods of preparing spherical metal powder in production still have some drawbacks, such as satellite particle, hollow particle and low sphericity. In this paper, a novel method of flash remelting spheroidization (FRS) was used to prepare high quality spherical powder, which can significantly increase the sphericity and avoid the defects in conventional methods. First, the falling behavior and heat transfer process were investigated for experimental parameters pre-decision. The experimental results show good agreement with calculation. The powder fabricated exhibits a smooth surface, dense interior and high sphericity. Accordingly, the flowability increased to 17.6 s/50 g, and the bulk density reached 4.43 g/cm(3) . Besides, the particles melt and solidify in the falling process under reducing atmosphere. The powder's oxygen content reduced to 0.0676%. Therefore, FRS is an effective method to produce high-quality and low-defect spherical alloy powder. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.