Abstract
Additive manufacturing could be an excellent way of shaping magnetocaloric heat exchangers in magnetic refrigerators. However, the metal additive manufacturing techniques present the serious limitation that the melting of a magnetocaloric material can cause its transformation and the loss of functionality. Fused deposition modeling using polymer-based composite filaments is presented as a promising alternative as temperatures are low enough to preserve the magnetocaloric material. To prove this claim, a polymer-based composite filament containing 55 wt% of (La,Ce)(Fe,Mn,Si)13–H magnetocaloric fillers has been manufactured using custom-made polymer capsules as the feedstock for the extrusion. Both adiabatic temperature change and isothermal entropy change have been characterized for the fillers, as-prepared filaments and as-printed parts, indicating that the magnetocaloric material functionality is not altered along the whole process. Printing resolution is comparable to the raw PLA filament.
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