Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Institute (ATAMI)

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a relatively new manufacturing technique that can create high complexity parts out of many materials in low volume. The fused filament fabrication (FFF) is the lowest cost AM process and is capable of producing only thermoplastic components. Powder injection molding (PIM) is a high volume low cost manufacturing technique for producing complex high precision parts from ceramic or metal powders. This research focuses on applying PIM material systems to the FFF process. Enabling the printing of a high powder loaded thermoplastic binder system which is capable of being printed by FFF methods, and be processed and sintered into a metal component. This new 3d printing process would be much less expensive than current AM of metal materials because of FFFs low cost and low post processing costs to produce densified parts. To achieve this, the goal was to develop a powder-polymer feedstock that could be made into FFF filament, 3D printed, solvent debound, thermally debound, and sintered. Materials for developing the feedstock were selecting from existing FFF and PIM polymers and powders. The developed feedstock was varied to improve ease of printing. The feedstocks were then tested to determine their ability to perform the intended processing steps. The results from experimentation showed FFF printing of materials with a high powder loading of 54.9vol% was possible, and the printed parts can be solvent and thermally debound. Preliminary sintering testing indicated densification occurred but was hindered by improper processing parameters.