An innovative machine for Fused Deposition Modeling of metals and advanced ceramics

Abstract

Abstract. The design of a new additive manufacturing (AM) system based on extrusion and 3D deposition of a mixture of metal (or advanced ceramic) powder and polymeric binder is described in this paper. The proposed system is totally innovative in terms of combination of deposited work material, extrusion system (head and nozzle), and deposition work table, which is based on a 5-axes parallel kinematics machine (PKM). The extrusion head and nozzle have been designed in order to be able to extrude high viscosity mixtures with low polymeric content. The 5-axes PKM is aimed at obtaining a good surface quality of the deposited work and reducing the need for supports during deposition. After the deposition, the material is de-binded and sintered to nearly the density of the solid material ascast. The design and kinematics of the machine and especially the PKM table is described in this paper, the main design issues are discussed and some preliminary extrusion and sintering results are presented.

Rapid production of hollow SS316 profiles by extrusion based additive manufacturing

“…This mixture is processed through extruder for homogenization and then palletised for ease of handling. The specially designed and developed extrusion based additive manufacturing machine allow distinct control over extrusion system and parallel kinematic table for customised printing [11,12]. The prepared feedstock (pelletised mixture) is extruded at controlled flowrates through a nozzle for deposition.…”

Mechatronic Design for an Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing Machine

“…Unfortunately, both of these are required to operate in a tightly controlled atmosphere of inert gas or under vacuum and moreover involve cost and design complexities that create difficulties in their adoption on a large scale. A flexible and simpler possible alternative is being developed at the Department of Mechanics of the Milan Polytechnic, reference [11], based on the design and realisation of a 3D printing solution through the use of a metal injection moulding (MIM) extruder (Figure 1). …”

Short fiber reinforced 3d printed ceramic composite with shear induced alignment

“…Three dimensional printing (3DP) methods of ceramics and ceramic composites can directly produce complex parts from 3D computer-aided design (CAD) files without the use of any tooling. Fused deposition modeling (FDM) [2], selective laser sintering (SLS) [3], ceramic jet printing (CJP) [4], and stereolithography (SLA) [5] are some of the common 3DP methods which are used for additive manufacturing of ceramic and ceramic composite materials. During these processes, 3D complex objects are fabricated by rendering each layer according to CAD file and stacking them on each other.…”

“…Fabricated green part must be sintered to remove polymeric binder and to fuse the particles. However, extrusion of precursor filament is often disturbed by buckling failures and powder volume fraction is limited by extrusion pressure at the nozzle for FDM and CJP processes [2]. On the other hand, SLA of ceramics utilizes photosensitive resin as a binder to produce the green parts without any nozzle and high energy laser beam.…”