Sustainable production of copper components using concentrated solar energy in material extrusion additive manufacturing (MEX-CSE)

Abstract

Material extrusion is a suitable technology for the additive manufacturing of complex components from any family of materials. The processing of metallic parts involves a three-stage methodology known as PDS (Printing-Debinding-Sintering). In the printing stage, filaments made of metallic powder and a polymeric binder system are used. After printing, the binder must be removed, and the parts sintered to obtain densified metal components with the final properties. These last two stages, in particular sintering, require high temperatures, and are thus high-energy demanding processes. The use of the Concentrated Solar Energy (CSE) is increasingly the focus of research in materials science as it is a clean, non-polluting, renewable energy resource, which is highly efficient for high temperature materials processing. This is the first study to analyse the feasibility of using CSE in the thermal debinding and sintering stages in the production of metallic components via Printing-Debinding-Solar Sintering (PDSS) technology. The objective is to develop a new sustainable process for producing metallic components by combining additive manufacturing and solar energy. In this study, pure copper cylindrical parts were produced and sintered in a low-cost Fresnel lens. The results revealed that solar sintering occurred at lower temperature (975 °C) and much shorter time (∼1 h) than in the conventional process, enhancing the economic and environmental efficiency of the conventional manufacturing process.