Metal 3D Printing Powder: A Buyer's Guide to Specs and Cost
Most metal powder quotes are not comparable, because the sellers are quoting different things. One is quoting a commodity mesh-grade product, another a qualified alloy, and both price sheets say "316L". This guide is the order in which to make the decisions, the datasheet fields that actually matter, what moves the price, and what to write on the purchase order.
This is a buyer's guide, not a catalogue. Where a number depends on the supplier or the lot, we say so rather than invent a figure. Published price and index data is dated and linked at the end; nothing here is a quotation from us.
We do make and ship these powders — see metal and nylon powder supply — but the checklist below is the one we would want a customer to run against us.
What is actually in a metal 3D printing powder?
A powder is not a commodity. It is a set of measured properties, and each one changes how your part behaves. Four of them do most of the talking.
Particle size distribution (PSD)
Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF, widely called SLM or DMLS) generally wants a narrow band, most often 15–45 µm, with 15–53 µm also common. The important part is not the band but the D-values: D10, D50 and D90 describe the actual distribution. Typical LPBF targets sit around D10 of 15–20 µm and D50 of 30–40 µm. A distribution that is too wide degrades layer uniformity and melt-pool stability, and you cannot see that from a band written on a datasheet.
Sphericity and satellites
Gas-atomised LPBF feedstock is commonly screened at sphericity of 0.9 or better. Spherical particles flow and pack well; irregular or hollow particles trap gas, cause spatter and drive porosity. Satellite particles — small droplets stuck to the surface of a parent particle — are the same problem in miniature.
Oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen
Interstitials are what separate a commodity from a qualified alloy, especially in titanium. The published titanium powder datasheets we have seen typically land at oxygen of 0.12–0.15 wt%, with aerospace and ELI grades specified lower. Titanium cannot be water atomised at all: it needs gas atomisation or a plasma rotating electrode process to keep pickup inside the certificate limit.
Flow and density
Flowability is measured on a Hall flowmeter funnel and reported in seconds per 50 grams. LPBF grades commonly land at 30–35 s/50 g or better; nickel superalloys are often specified much tighter, around 15 s/50 g, because they are harder to spread. Apparent and tap density matter for packing and for how much powder you recover, and they vary a lot by alloy — compare them only against the same material's data sheet, never across materials.
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The route names are worth asking about because they explain most of the quality differences you will pay for. Moving up the list removes more risk and costs more, and for reactive alloys you cannot use the bottom of the list at all.
Which grade should you buy?
Buyers usually start at the alloy and work backwards. That is backwards. The order below removes options fastest, and each step is cheap to answer.
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Step 3 in practice: grade is an oxygen decision
For titanium this is where buyers spend money unnecessarily. Grade 5 (Ti-6Al-4V) and Grade 23 ELI are the same alloy with a different oxygen budget. ELI — extra low interstitial — buys better fracture toughness and fatigue resistance, which matters for medical implants and some fatigue-loaded aerospace parts. If your part is not fatigue-critical, ELI is an expensive way to solve a problem you do not have. Published Chinese reference listings put the ELI premium at roughly 35% over Grade 5, which is a large enough gap to be worth a decision rather than a default.
Our own material pages carry the specification we work to for Ti-6Al-4V (Grade 5), AlSi10Mg, stainless steel 316L and CuCrZr copper — those pages are the right place to check whether we can meet your specification before you spend time on a quote.
How do you read a supplier's datasheet?
Most datasheets are long, and the useful part is eight fields long. These are the ones that change your part, and the standard that goes with each.
| Field | What to look for | Where it is standardised |
|---|---|---|
| PSD with method | D10 / D50 / D90, and the measurement method stated | Laser diffraction to ISO 13320; sieving to ASTM B214 / ISO 4497 |
| Sphericity | A figure, not an adjective; SEM images per lot if you are paying for a premium | Commonly specified at 0.9 or better |
| Chemistry incl. interstitials | O, N, H reported individually with the method and the limit | ASTM F2924 (Ti-6Al-4V), ASTM F3318 (AlSi10Mg finished-part properties), ASTM F3184 (316L) |
| Flow | Hall flow in s/50 g, with the funnel size | ISO 4490 |
| Apparent / tap density | g/cm³, for the specific alloy | ISO 3923-1 |
| Production route | GA, VIGA, EIGA, PREP or plasma — and the feedstock | ASTM F3049 is the LPBF feedstock guide |
| Lot certificate | Issued for your lot, not a generic datasheet | Traceability to EN 4819 / EN 9100 where aerospace |
| Reuse declaration | Virgin feedstock? Blending allowed? Cycle count for the lot | Set by the powder maker's qualification, not by a standard |
Standards listed are the ones a buyer normally writes onto a purchase order. Requirements differ by application and by jurisdiction — treat this as a starting point, then check your own quality system.
Two things worth flagging. First, the general vocabulary for all of this sits in ISO/ASTM 52900, which is worth reading once so the rest of the documentation makes sense. Second, a word like "premium" on a datasheet tells you nothing measurable; only a number does.
What actually drives the price?
When two quotes for the same alloy differ by a lot, these are the reasons — in roughly the order they matter.
- Route and feedstock. A gas-atomised LPBF grade and a PREP grade are different products with different costs of production. Asking which route made the powder is the single most informative question in a first exchange.
- Oxygen specification. Lower oxygen limits, particularly in titanium, mean tighter process control and often more expensive feedstock. This is the biggest single lever in the titanium grades.
- Grade choice. ELI versus Grade 5 is a published, meaningful price step, not a supplier's invention.
- PSD tightness. A narrow, well-characterised distribution costs more to classify than a wide one.
- Batch size. Small quantities carry a disproportionate per-kilogram cost; this is normal and worth asking about openly.
- Raw metal movement. Metal prices move daily, and any quote lives or dies by how long it is held. This is the subject of our article on reading Chinese powder price data, including why a public index number and a supplier quote are not comparable.
You will find published figures for powder reuse cycle limits, and they disagree — ranges from ten to thirty cycles appear in the literature and in practice it is set by the powder maker's qualification and your application. Treat any specific number you are handed as one supplier's qualified limit, not a universal rule, and ask for that limit in writing for the grade you are buying.
What to check when the powder arrives, and how to store it
Two areas cause more real problems than the purchasing decision does.
Combustion and handling
Aluminium, titanium and magnesium powders are combustible metal dusts and have to be handled under a recognised standard, typically NFPA 484 in the United States, with equivalent rules elsewhere: grounded equipment, inert purge cycles, no water on a titanium fire, and storage that keeps containers closed. If a supplier has never raised this with you, ask about it — it is a reasonable sign of how they run the rest of their quality system.
Storage and shelf life
Argon- or vacuum-sealed containers with a stated shelf life are table stakes; reactive alloys are commonly shipped with headspace oxygen specified at sealing. Check the container condition on arrival, and check whether the moisture spec is stated on the certificate rather than in a brochure. Every time the container is opened the powder gains a chance to pick up oxygen, so the practical storage question is how many times and how long — not whether the original seal was intact.
Before the first build
Do not skip the machine's own parameter set for the lot. Powder specification and machine qualification are separate systems, and a powder that meets every datasheet number can still behave differently from the lot your process was qualified on. That is a process question, and it belongs with the machine, not the powder supplier.
What to put on the purchase order
The list is short, and it is the same list we would want asked of us. Ask any supplier, including us, these eight questions.
- Which production route, and was the feedstock virgin or recycled?
- PSD method and D10 / D50 / D90 — not just a band.
- Oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, with methods, and the limits this lot is held to.
- Sphericity as a number, plus SEM images if this is a premium grade.
- Lot certificate of analysis — issued for the lot you receive.
- Reuse cycles: what this lot has seen, and what your qualified limit is.
- Certification scope for your application, stated in writing. Ask any supplier to state theirs; if you are working to an aerospace or medical quality system, that answer is part of your purchase record.
- Storage life and handling requirements, in writing, including the standard they work to.
Put the answers on the purchase order, not in an email thread. If a supplier will only give them verbally, that is your answer about that supplier.
Polymer powders and resins follow different logic
Everything above is written for metal, because metal is where the specification does the most work. If you also buy polymer feedstock, do not carry these habits across unchanged — the failure modes are different.
Nylon PA12 for SLS
PA12 is hygroscopic, and moisture is the specification that matters. Wet powder prints parts with visibly different surface finish and can degrade layer adhesion. So the questions are different from metal: what moisture level is the lot guaranteed to, what packaging is it supplied in, and how should it be stored between builds. Published SLS workflows treat unused powder as reusable across a number of build cycles, but the limit is set by the machine maker and the powder supplier together — the same "ask for the qualified limit, do not accept a published number" rule applies. The comparable number across suppliers is the melt flow behaviour at the specified test condition, which is what the powder's viscosity and molecular weight actually govern. Our PA12 data sheet states what we supply.
SLA resins
Resin is bought by shelf life, not by particle size. Three things decide whether a resin lot is usable when it arrives: the stated shelf life, whether it has been stored dark and within its temperature range, and whether it has been properly agitated. Viscosity in particular moves with temperature, and a drum that has been in a hot container will not behave like one from a climate-controlled store — which is a sourcing question, not a processing one. If your parts are skin-contact or medical, ask specifically about the certification scope for that use rather than accepting a general statement about biocompatibility. We supply photopolymer resins alongside the powders.
Getting quotes you can actually compare
Most suppliers are quoting from the same datasheet, which means the differences that matter are not in the price line but in what each one has assumed. Here is a way to remove that.
Send an identical request to everyone
The same request, with the same information, to every supplier. State the alloy and grade, the PSD band and the method you want quoted against, the oxygen limit if the alloy is one where it matters, the quantity, the destination, and whether you need a certificate of analysis for the delivered lot. If a supplier asks a question you have not answered, that question is information too — write it down and send the same clarification to the others.
Normalise the price
Compare on cost per buildable part, not cost per kilogram. That normalises away everything that differs legitimately: recovery rate, reuse allowance, and yield. A powder that is cheaper per kilogram and produces more scrap per build is not cheaper. If a supplier will not tell you their recovery figure, that is the answer about that supplier.
Ask what the price excludes
Most gaps between a quote and an invoice are scope, not margin. Freight, insurance, duties, minimum order quantities, licence or certification costs, and container charges are all frequently outside the unit price. Ask for the exclusions explicitly. Also ask how long the price is valid — in a market where the underlying metal moves daily, a quote without a validity period is not a quote.
Treat a large gap as a signal
If one quote is far below the others, the cheapest explanation is usually that it is a different product — a different route, a wider PSD band, a lower oxygen limit tolerance, virgin rather than blended, or a scope exclusion. Occasionally it is simply a better price, but you cannot tell which without asking. Ask.
Shipping, customs and the practicalities
Two things sit outside the datasheet and inside your project plan.
Handling in transit and on arrival
Metal powders ship as sealed containers with desiccant, and the combustible-dust rules apply to storage as well as to use. What you should plan for is container condition on arrival: check for damage, check the desiccant if present, and check the seal. If a container has been opened or damaged, do not blend it into your working powder without quarantining it first — that single habit prevents the most common cause of a bad build.
Cross-border and controlled materials
Metal powders attract more customs attention than finished parts do, in both directions. Two practical consequences: ask your supplier for the commercial terms and the lead time in writing, because those are what your project plan needs, and if the order is leaving or entering China, check whether the specific grade is controlled before you commit to a date. We publish the current position for each grade in powder export eligibility by country, and it is worth reading before the order rather than after.
A quick reference: the five powders we supply
So that the specification discussion above has something concrete behind it, these are the materials we work to. Every figure here is the same one published on the linked material page, so if you need the full sheet, follow the link rather than trusting a summary.
| Material | Process | Density |
|---|---|---|
| Titanium Ti-6Al-4V (Grade 5) | SLM | 4.43 g/cm³ |
| Stainless steel 316L | SLM | 7.9 g/cm³ |
| Aluminium AlSi10Mg | SLM | 2.67 g/cm³ |
| Copper & CuCrZr | SLM | 8.9 g/cm³ |
| Nylon PA12 | SLS | 1.01 g/cm³ |
Copper is the one where the grade choice changes the numbers rather than the label, so it is worth quoting the three we work with:
| Copper grade | Electrical | Thermal |
|---|---|---|
| Pure copper (C11000) | ~100 % IACS | ~400 W/m·K |
| CuCrZr | ~75–85 % IACS | ~320–350 W/m·K |
| GRCop-42 | ~85–90 % IACS | ~330–350 W/m·K |
That is the trade a copper buyer is actually making: pure copper conducts best and is easiest to print, the precipitation-hardened grades trade a little conductivity for strength and service temperature. Which one is right depends on whether your part is a heat spreader, a current collector or a structural component — which is the alloy decision from step 2 of the checklist above, arriving again in a different form.
Powder can be supplied on its own, or against a printed part. Both routes are on metal and nylon powder supply; SLM metal printing covers what happens once the powder is on the machine.
Where this leaves you
The useful outcome of this guide is not a number. It is that the cheapest powder you are quoted is almost never the same product as the one that will print your part. Specify first — route, PSD, oxygen, certification, lot traceability — and only then compare prices between suppliers who meet that specification. The comparison then becomes meaningful, and it usually gets cheaper too.
Two things that will help you decide quickly: our material pages list what we work to for each alloy, and SLM metal printing covers what happens after the powder arrives. If your order needs a Chinese dual-use export licence, start with powder export eligibility by country — it tells you which grades are controlled and how far ahead to plan.
To get a written price against your specification, send the grade, quantity and destination through the quote form. One piece or a production run, the format is the same.
Standards referenced: ISO/ASTM 52900 (terminology) · ASTM F3049 (LPBF feedstock guide) · ASTM F2924 (PBF Ti-6Al-4V) · ASTM F3001 (Ti-6Al-4V ELI) · ASTM F3318 (AlSi10Mg) · ASTM F3184 (316L) · ASTM F3213 (Co-28Cr-6Mo) · ASTM F3055 (Ni N07718) · ASTM F3056 (Ni N06625) · ASTM F3301 (post-processing) · ASTM F3187 (DED guide) · ASTM B215 (sampling) · ASTM B214 / ISO 4497 (sieving) · ISO 13320 (laser-diffraction PSD) · ISO 4490 (Hall flow) · ISO 3923-1 (apparent density) · EN 4819 / EN 9100 (traceability) · MPIF 04/05 · NFPA 484 (combustible metal dust). Route ordering and the ELI premium reflect published Chinese reference listings dated 2026; the companion article on reading powder price data explains why index numbers and quotations differ.