Properties of Additive Manufactured Hardmetal Components Produced by Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)

摘要

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is experiencing an upswing in many sectors of industry for a broadvariety of materials. Processes are mainly developed for polymers and metals. For ceramics andespecially hardmetals there are only a few additive processes suitable to produce dense and defectfree parts. Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is one of the suitable processes, which can be used forthe fabrication of hardmetal parts via printing of green parts and consequent sintering.Within this study FFF of different hardmetal compositions representing different Co binder contentsand different WC grain sizes are investigated. Main points of this investigation are the adjustment ofdebindering using different thermal and non-thermal steps and the adjustment of sintering regime. It isshown that FFF is a suitable AM technique for production of hardmetal parts with differentcompositions and microstructures. Dense parts with magnetic and mechanical properties asconventional produced hardmetals can be achieved.