Mechanical, Electrical, and Thermal Characterization of Pure Copper Parts Manufactured via Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing (MEAM) is a novel technology to produce polymeric, metallic, and ceramic complex components. Filaments composed of a high-volume content of metal powder and a suitable binder system are needed to obtain metallic parts. Thermal and energetic controversies do not affect MEAM technology, although common in other additive manufacturing (AM) techniques. High thermal conductivity and reflectivity of copper to high-energy beams are the most challenging properties. A material extrusion technique to produce high density and quality copper parts is deeply studied in this research. Characterization of the filament, printed parts, brown parts and final sintered parts is provided. The sintering stage is evaluated through density analysis of the sintered copper parts, as well as their dimensional accuracy after part shrinkage inherent to the sintering process. The mechanical behavior of sintered parts is assessed through tensile, hardness and impact toughness tests. In addition, the measured electrical and thermal conductivities are compared to those obtained by other AM technologies. High-density components, with 95% of relative density, were successfully manufactured using MEAM technology. Similar or even superior mechanical, thermal and electrical properties than those achieved by other 3D printing processes such as Electron Beam Melting, Selective Laser Melting and Binder Jetting were obtained.

Process optimization and characterization of dense pure copper parts produced by paste-based 3D micro-extrusion

“…Research on extrusion-based printing has been performed by employing various printing strategies, i.e. cross-printing [21], [23], unidirectional [29] and unidirectional (0-0°) hexagonal layer stacking [30]. Feilden et al employed a hexagonal layer stacking which is anticipated to result in a closed-packed stacking of filaments along with an overlap of the fibers [30].…”

“…Few studies attempted the production of pure Cu by extrusion-based AM of a filament feedstock such as Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) [18] and Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) [19][20][21]. Cañadilla et al studied FFF of pure copper and have demonstrated the feasibility of J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f producing parts of 95.3 %TD using Markforged ® filament containing 95 wt% metal which exhibited an electrical conductivity of 82 %IACS [21]. Regarding MEX using pellet-based feedstock, Ren et al tested multiple sintering temperatures for the densification of the parts.…”

Influence of Short-Pulse Microwave Radiation on Thermochemical Properties Aluminum Micropowder

“…Metal powders are used in a wide range of industrial applications including 3D printing technologies [ 1 ], additive technologies [ 2 ], pyrotechnics [ 3 ], and ceramics production [ 4 ]. Increasing the reactivity of metal powders in various processes contributes to lower energy costs and saving resources [ 5 ].…”

Characterization of the Metal Fused Filament Fabrication Process for Manufacturing of Pure Copper Inductors

“…The debound part is then sintered (heated to a temperature slightly below the melting point of the metal) in an oven to create the final part. The Metal-FFF process was successfully used to create parts out of different steels [19][20][21], titanium alloys [22][23][24] or pure copper [25][26][27][28]. Most research for Metal-AM is centered around the manufacturing of an optimized binder system [24,29,30] or the usage of closed-off proprietary ecosystems (e.g., Metal-X system [25,27]) to study the mechanical properties and the density of the sintered parts [25,27].…”

“…The Metal-FFF process was successfully used to create parts out of different steels [19][20][21], titanium alloys [22][23][24] or pure copper [25][26][27][28]. Most research for Metal-AM is centered around the manufacturing of an optimized binder system [24,29,30] or the usage of closed-off proprietary ecosystems (e.g., Metal-X system [25,27]) to study the mechanical properties and the density of the sintered parts [25,27]. While these filaments are more affordable than other methods of additive manufacturing, the cost will be even lower for off-the-shelf commercial filaments usable with consumer-grade FFF 3D printers.…”