Multimaterial Components by Material Extrusion-Fused Filament Fabrication (ME-FFF) - Production of an Infrared Heater

摘要

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is a type of Material Extrusion (ME) Additive Manufacturing (AM) and it is one of the most commonly used polymer-based AM techniques. FFF could also be used to produce green parts with complex geometry out of feedstocks and after debinding and sintering a full metal or ceramic part is obtained. FFF offers the possibility of combining different materials. In polymers, this is a relatively easy operation. But for the production of ceramic and/or metal parts consisting of different materials this is a challenging task. First, the materials to be combined have to show a similar thermal expansion coefficient, then their powders have to sinter similarly and additionally, both feedstocks have to be printable in the same machine and to show a comparable debinding behaviour. Here, the complete processing route for a multimaterial Infrared (IR) heater out of steel and zirconia will be shown with a first evaluation of its performance. The new production process allows the customisation of IR heaters, which is unique and technically unachievable by traditional processes.