Additive Manufacturing of Metallic and Ceramic Components by the Material Extrusion of Highly-Filled Polymers: A Review and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is the fabrication of real three-dimensional objects from metals, ceramics, or plastics by adding material, usually as layers. There are several variants of AM; among them material extrusion (ME) is one of the most versatile and widely used. In MEAM, molten or viscous materials are pushed through an orifice and are selectively deposited as strands to form stacked layers and subsequently a three-dimensional object. The commonly used materials for MEAM are thermoplastic polymers and particulate composites; however, recently innovative formulations of highly-filled polymers (HP) with metals or ceramics have also been made available. MEAM with HP is an indirect process, which uses sacrificial polymeric binders to shape metallic and ceramic components. After removing the binder, the powder particles are fused together in a conventional sintering step. In this review the different types of MEAM techniques and relevant industrial approaches for the fabrication of metallic and ceramic components are described. The composition of certain HP binder systems and powders are presented; the methods of compounding and filament making HP are explained; the stages of shaping, debinding, and sintering are discussed; and finally a comparison of the parts produced via MEAM-HP with those produced via other manufacturing techniques is presented.

Material extrusion‐based additive manufacturing of polypropylene: A review on how to improve dimensional inaccuracy and warpage

“…Apart from studies dealing with PP as a base compound for highly filled systems, in which the polymeric part is burnt away before the sintering step, only a handful of studies on neat PP have so far been conducted for the use in ME‐AM. Next, to PP‐based blends used for ME‐AM and PP blends based on polymeric waste, Volpato et al .…”

“…The evolving growth of scientific studies (displayed in purple in Figure ) on polystyrene (PS), poly(ether sulfone), poly(butylene terephthalate), and other polyesters, as well as poly(ε‐caprolactone) represent the expanding urge of widening the material portfolio. The fact that even niche materials, such as plant‐based polymers, biopolymers, silicone elastomers, recycled polymers, or highly filled polymers for the production of metals/ceramics, have been under investigation for the use in ME‐AM confirms the desired rapid growth in the process's material variety. Nevertheless, the usability of such novel materials for ME‐AM as an everyday usable and reliable material such as PLA or ABS will be determined in the future.…”

Optimization of the 3D Printing Parameters for Tensile Properties of Specimens Produced by Fused Filament Fabrication of 17-4PH Stainless Steel

“…As previously mentioned, finding the right combination of polymers is not a simple task due to the contradictory requirements of FFF and, later on, during debinding. Possible binder compositions for sinterable FFF filaments were discussed previously [19,29].…”

Accelerating Fuel Cell Development with Additive Manufacturing Technologies: State of the Art, Opportunities and Challenges

“…Material extrusion produces a 3D structure by applying the pressure to push the material through nozzles or orifices, and deposit the material layer by layer and the schematic diagram is shown in Figure a. Material extrusion is one of the most widely used AM technologies which has been defined and categorized differently in review papers , . For example, the technology that employing the technique of extruding the material through a heated nozzle include fused deposition modeling (FDM), fused filament fabrication (FFF) .…”