Development of a powder feeder for transporting metal powder in zero gravity

This paper presents the development of a powder feeder for use in microgravity for the LP-DED process. The requirements result from the presented experimental setup, the experiment execution at the Einstein-Elevator as well as from the analysis of a classical powder feeder. Based on this, possible conveying principles are examined using the Discrete Element Method and possible designs are derived. Finally, a prototype implementation is presented.