Improving Cold Sprayability—Mixed Metal Powders

In this paper, it is shown that mixing metal powders can lead to improvements in cold sprayability (i.e. increases in the deposition efficiency and decreases in the porosity) of the ‘matrix’ powder. This finding is illustrated with the following ‘binary’ mixtures: Ti – 6Al-4 V and commercial purity Ti; stainless steel and iron; spherical tantalum with irregular tantalum and two types of spherical tantalum with different characteristics. It is shown that a critical addition can significantly influence cold sprayability, but above this, there is little change in cold sprayability. Hardness differences are considered to be the first order influence, but differences in particle sizes and morphology may also be contributing factors.