Experimental investigations into mechanical and thermal properties of rapid manufactured copper parts

Abstract

In the present paper, mechanical and thermal properties of rapidly manufactured copper parts were studied. The combination of three-dimensional printing and ultrasonic assisted pressureless sintering was used to fabricate copper parts. First, the ultimate tensile strength and thermal conductivity were compared between ultrasonic assisted and conventional pressureless sintered samples. The homogenously mixing of particles and local heat generation by ultrasonic vibrations promoted the sintering driving process and resulted in better mechanical and thermal properties. Furthermore, response surface methodology was adopted for the comprehensive study of the ultrasonic sintering parameters (sintering temperature, heating rate, and soaking time with ultrasonic vibrations) on ultimate tensile strength and thermal conductivity of the fabricated sample. Analysis of variance was performed to identify the significant factors and interactions. The image processing method was used to identify the surface porosity at different parameter levels to analyse the experimental results. High ultimate tensile strength was obtained at high sintering temperature, long soaking time, and slow heating rate with low surface porosity. After 60 min of soaking time, no significant effect was observed on the thermal conductivity of the fabricated sample. The significant interactions revealed less effect of soaking time at low sintering temperatures for ultimate tensile strength and less effect of heating rate at low sintering temperatures for thermal conductivity. Multi-objective optimization was carried out to identify parameters for maximum ultimate tensile strength and maximum thermal conductivity.

Neck growth kinetics during ultrasonic-assisted sintering of copper powder

“…The detailed description of the ultrasonic horn design and rapid tooling methodology was presented in the previous studies by Singh and Pandey. 16,23,24 The schematic diagram of the setup is shown in Figure 2. The ultrasonic horn was assembled to the sintering furnace to acquire furnace heat at the crucible position.…”

Biological and mechanical characterization of biodegradable carbonyl iron powder/polycaprolactone composite material fabricated using three-dimensional printing for cardiovascular stent application

“…4,5 In addition, three-dimensional (3D) printing has attracted the interest of the researcher for fabrication of biodegradable polymeric stents. [6][7][8][9][10] Furthermore, 3D printing technique fabricates the precise and accurate biomedical tissue constructs of any shape and size along with a customizable design with drug loading capacities. 11 PCL being a semi-crystalline polymer bears excellent flexibility, thermal stability, but significantly lower strength and tensile modulus because of lower crystallinity.…”

Electric discharge machining using rapid manufactured complex shape copper electrode: Parametric analysis and process optimization for material removal rate, electrode wear rate and cavity dimensions

“…The ultrasonic vibration assistance was also investigated for improving the density of the pure copper parts fabricated by using 3D printing and sintering. 24–28 The process resulted in the fabrication of pure copper complex shapes with low porosity. However, it lags to produce large size parts as desired for EDM electrodes.…”