LPW’s new £20 million 90,000ft2 facility at Widnes Waterfront will house atomisers capable of making small to medium volumes of very clean powders, primarily custom titanium, nickel, cobalt, aluminium, and steel alloys.
The powder manufacturing facility has been designed to control contamination at every step of the process, with segregation of cells for specific material production.
The company says the powder manufacturing facility will be operated under cleanroom conditions with contamination controlled to a degree never before seen in the manufacture of AM metal powders.
It is adopting pharma levels of cleanliness and the new factory will have pressure, temperature and humidity control. Different areas are segregated by air showers and interlocking doors. The packaging is also carried out to Cleanroom levels.
“At LPW we view AM from the perspective of the powder,” comments Dr Phil Carroll, LPW’s founder and CEO. “At formnext we’ll be showcasing our new production capability, assuring manufacturers operating in safety-critical sectors that our atomisation equipment has been designed to engineer out the risk of contamination in our AM metal powders.”
LPW focuses on materials to drive improved performance in the AM process. It will showcase both its PowderRange series of AM metal powders, and PowderLife, the AM suite of powders, products and solutions designed to support AM in production.
PowderRange premium, off-the-shelf metal powders are supplied to quality management standards AS 9120, AS 9100, ISO 9001 and ISO 13485, and dispatched within 24 hours of receipt of order. Every PowderRange powder is shipped with a test certificate, adding assurance that the consistency and specification have been checked and confirmed in LPW’s certified laboratories.
PowderLife is now available to support AM industrialisation: AM metal powders are tailored to individual customer specifications with hardware and software solutions to deliver material traceability and control through repeated builds.
Portal Construction worked with AEW Architects, Tier Consulting, C4 Consulting and KGA on the factory build.
