Manufacturing

From state-of-the-art facilities in the UK, Liberty Powder Metals provide vacuum inert gas atomisation in argon of steel, nickel and cobalt alloys deploying anti-satellite technology and plasma titanium and aluminium alloys.

Righton Blackburns Powder Metals is the sole UK distributor of Liberty Powder Metals' products.

Always innovating and with a heritage of metallurgy knowledge and expertise spanning over 100 years complimented by a dedicated team for near net shape powder metallurgy, Liberty Powder Metals have powder ranges designed and optimised for Additive Manufacturing and PM-HIP.

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Next generation alloy development

Liberty Powder Metals are committed to R&D for next generation alloy development, and have a growing range of new alloys. Customisation options include powder size distribution, chemistry adjustment, and new alloy development are available upon request.

Powder manufacturing plant
Powder manufacturing plant

Confidence and certainty in the consistency and repeatability of the metal powders you choose

Utilising the full suite of powder characterisation and testing coupled with their unique optimisation processes ensures the quality of metal powders is consistently repeated.

Liberty Powder Metals provide powder metal to customers working in some of the most challenging and demanding, mission critical environments including aerospace, space, defence, medical, energy, automotive and precision engineering.

They deliver highly spherical metal powders that resuly in excellent flow and packing characteristics essential for metal Additive Manufacturing, PMHIP and near net shape production. All our metal powders are application optimised.

Metal powder lab testing
Metal powder lab testing
Metal powder production
Metal powder production

Powder Manufacture and Characterisation

Atomisation

Atomisation is a process in which a bulk liquid is broken up (typically using high pressure water or gas flow) into droplets. Although there are a number of emerging atomising technologies (such as ultrasonics, plasma atomisation and plasma rotating electrode process) the two main processes used to manufacture metal powder are gas atomisation and water atomisation. The aim of this section is to provide a brief introduction to the gas and water atomisation processes.

A typical atomisation process involves three main stages:
  1. Melting pre-alloyed or pure metal ingots
  2. Atomisation
  3. Product recovery and classification

In the gas atomisation process high pressure gas is used to break the molten metal liquid into droplets. The gas source can be atmospheric gas or more typically an inert gas such as argon, nitrogen or rarely helium.

Gas atomisation can be used to produce almost all types of metal powder, and is typically used to manufacture powder for high end manufacturing technologies (HIP, AM, MIM) due to its ability to produce powder with highly spherical(ish) particles with an oxygen content comparatively lower than that of water atomised powder. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of a typical particles produced via the gas atomisation method are shown below.

vacuum/machine

Measurement Techniques

Internal

Characteristic Method Typical Standard(s)

Particle Morphology

Static Image Analysis

ISO 13322-1

Particle Size Distribution

Laser Diffraction

ASTM B822

Particle Size Distribution

Test Sieve Analysis

ASTM B214

Particle Density

Pycnometery

ASTM B923

Flow and packing properties

Tapped/apparent density

ASTM B527

Flow and packing properties

Hall/Carney Flow

ASTM B212/B213/B417/B964

Oxygen, nitrogen analysis

Inert gas fusion

Material specific

Carbon, sulphur analysis

Combustion infrared detection

Material specific

External

Characteristic Method Typical Standard(s)

Particle Morphology

SEM

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Particle Morphology

Dynamic Image Analysis

ISO 13322-2

Hydrogen analysis

Inert gas fusion

Material specific

Bulk chemical analysis

ICP spectroscopy

Material specific

Warehouse - Righton Blackburns

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Righton Blackburns Powder Metals

Building 38,
Second Avenue,
The Pensnett Estate,
Kingswinford,
West Midlands, DY6 7UN
+44 (0)1384 276 400
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