Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC 2020

In the last few years, Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) gained increasing interest as a production method for metal and ceramic parts. Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is a type of material extrusion additive manufacturing (MEAM) and it is one of the most commonly used polymer-based additive manufacturing 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. One advantage of this method is the possibility to combine different materials in one part within one production step. Thus, different properties can be combined within one part, such as electrically conductive/insulating, magnetic/non-magnetic, which can be used in many areas like electronics or sensors. In polymers, the combination of different materials is a relatively easy operation. However, 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; secondly, their powders have to sinter similarly. Additionally both feedstocks have to be printable in the same machine and must show a comparable debinding behaviour. Here, the processing route for multimaterial components will be shown with emphasis on the critical steps arising from the joint processing of different materials. Several methods to adjust the behaviour of the different materials during processing are discussed.