Platinum Powder for Additive Manufacturing of Jewelry

Additive Manufacturing (AM) of jewelry is considered especially interesting for platinum due to several advantages over conventional manufacturing technologies. Its adoption by the jewellery industry so far is limited, however, due to several barriers including the availability of suitable platinum powders. This presentation reports on the development of a new small-scale atomizer and the required process technology for time- and cost-efficient production of platinum alloy powder. The particular challenges for atomizing such alloys at temperatures above 2000°C with a high yield of usable powder and with the desired particle size distribution are discussed. Examples are shown for 900-950 platinum alloy powders produced for different AM technologies including Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) or the sinter-based Binder Jetting (BJ) process. It is also shown that fine-tuning of the powder size distribution by post-processing via air-classification is essential. Relevant properties of the powders with respect to AM applications are discussed.