Metal AM powder cost: what public evidence shows (2026)

Why powder dominates LPBF economics

A build consumes powder for the parts themselves, plus supports, shrink and wrap allowances, sieving losses and the “oversize” kept out of circulation. Most of that powder is reused across builds — but each reuse cycle consumes material and requires testing to confirm the lot still performs. Virgin-to-used blending ratios, storage practice (inert gas, humidity, shelf life) and the cost of reuse qualification all land in your per-part number before a single machine hour is billed.

The public price record is thin — and that is the finding

This site exists because machine pricing hides behind “request a quote”. Powder pricing hides further: no major supplier publishes a complete per-kilogram list for the common aerospace grades, and the per-kg figures that circulate in blog posts rarely carry a date, an alloy, a particle-size distribution or a virgin/reused basis. Rather than repeat unsourced numbers, this page tracks what can be verified: market structure, reuse economics and the signals that move quotes.

Market-structure signals, 2025–2026

• Sandvik divested its metal powder business, taking a SEK 230 million impairment and citing subscale volumes and low-cost Chinese competition (VoxelMatters, 2026-06-01 ↗); the subsequent BEAMIT bankruptcy sharpened the consolidation picture.
• EOS acquired Metalpine to verticalise its titanium powder supply (VoxelMatters, 2026-04-15 ↗) — machine OEMs are buying into feedstock.
• Chinese producer VMP, with roughly $51 million revenue, raised $46 million to expand globally under China's five-year plan (3DPrint.com, 2026-09-11 ↗).

Read together: downward price pressure on commodity grades from new entrants, and supply-risk premiums on the qualification-critical lots that aerospace buyers cannot easily re-source.

What the literature says (per-kilogram)

What the procurement records show (award totals, not per-kg)

These totals are searchable on USAspending.gov. They are evidence of transactions, not per-kilogram prices — the same caveat this site applies to machine awards. Inconel 718, AlSi10Mg, maraging steel and CuCrZr have no verifiable public per-kilogram figures at all.

Reuse is the cost lever

ASTM F3456 standardised how powder reuse is documented and tested, and the economics are real: a university cost model assigns reused powder 75% of virgin value, which turns reuse testing into an investment rather than a compliance chore. Reuse testing itself is not free — every cycle needs sampling, characterization and lot-control discipline. The buyer question to ask any supplier is not only the virgin powder price, but the reuse protocol, the blend ratio they warrant, and who pays for the testing.

What to do with this

Your supplier quotes are the only powder prices that matter for your case — and they belong in your own model, not a blog table. The calculator takes powder price and consumption as explicit inputs, so quote-driven changes are visible in the per-part and break-even outputs.