Abstract: Additive manufacturing is an important development direction of advanced manufacturing technique for metal parts, but the metal powder for additive manufacturing has some problems such as insufficient research and development, weak stability and incomplete standards, which seriously restrict its development. The basic principles of common spherical metal powder preparation techniques including centrifugal atomization method, two-stream atomization method and spheroidization method are summarized, and their advantages, disadvantages and development status are introduced. It is proposed that the development of domestic additive manufacturing powder preparation technique can start from two aspects. One is to carry out process and equipment improvement and standardization research on traditional methods, and build automated factories; the other is to strengthen the research on basic theories of powdering and explore new processes.