Ultrasonic Atomizer

To support alloy development for additive manufacturing (AM), a small lab-scale ultrasonic atomization system has been established for metallic powder production. Ultrasonic atomization offers unique advantages for research environments due to its ability to generate fine, spherical powders from small alloy batches, minimizing material requirements while enabling rapid compositional screening. The process operates by feeding molten metal onto a vibrating ultrasonic transducer, where cavitation and surface instabilities break the liquid stream into uniform droplets that rapidly solidify into powders under an inert gas atmosphere. Compared to conventional large-scale gas atomization, this lab-scale system requires less than a kilogram of feedstock and can produce powders with narrow, tunable size distributions ideal for AM research. When coupled with other metal AM capabilities, such as SAMAD, this equipment will enable researchers to accelerate the design of new metal alloys tailored for AM applications.