Abstract
As a novel manufacturing methodology, 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) attracts much more attentions for complex structure fabrication, especially for manufacturing metal parts. A number of metal AM processes have been studied and commercialized. However, most of them are costly and less accessible. This paper introduces a material extrusion based 3D printing process for making austenitic stainless steel 316L part using a metal-polymer composite filament (Ultrafuse 316LX). The stainless steel 316L metal specimens are printed by a commonly used 3D printer loaded with Ultrafuse filament, followed by an industry standard debinding and sintering process. Tests are performed to understand the material properties, such as hardness, tensile strength, and microstructural characteristics, of the stainless steel 316L material. In addition, an artifact model is designed to estimate the part shrinkage after the debinding and sintering process. It is found that the stainless steel 316L part exhibits apparent shrinkage after sintering. But using the Ultrafuse filament for 3D printing could be an alternative way of making metal AM parts.
Highlights
As an innovative metal part manufacturing method, 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely used in aerospace, bio-medical, and robotics industries [1]
The experiment is carried out to investigate the optimum parameters of printing the green part using the Flashforge Dreamer 3D printer
As the voids are coherently included in the printed part, the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process is unable to build fully dense samples
Summary
As an innovative metal part manufacturing method, 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely used in aerospace, bio-medical, and robotics industries [1]. Popular metal AM technology includes direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), selective laser melting (SLM), laser cusing, laser engineered net shaping (LENS), and electron beam melting (EBM), etc., which all use metallic powder as raw materials [2]. These metal AM technologies are capable of producing complex structures and geometrical features directly from digital models (CAD), which are impossible to create using other methods. An affordable metal AM or 3D printing process is highly desired for small business and university labs
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