Development of highly-filled polymer compounds for fused filament fabrication of ceramics and solvent debinding

Santiago Cano Cano, Joamin Gonzalez-Gutierrez, Janak Sapkota, Christian Kukla, Clemens Holzer

Research output: Contribution to conferencePresentationResearch

Abstract

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is one of the most widely used additive manufacturing processes in the world, due to its simplicity to use and lower cost of the processing equipment. It has been demonstrated that it is possible to produce complete ceramic parts shaped by FFF combined with thermal debinding and sintering [1, 2]. In order to be able to use conventional FFF machines for the shaping of ceramic parts, a highly-filled compound of polymer and ceramic powder needs to be prepared. This compound has to fulfil many requirements: for a constant flow of material a filament must have constant dimensions and shape; the filament should have sufficient stiffness so that it can be pushed without buckling during printing; the filament should be flexible enough to be spooled for easy storage and feeding to the FFF machine; and the polymeric binder should be able to be removed without destroying the printed part. The objective of this investigation was the development of polymer compounds being able to carry out the FFF process and at the same time to be debindable by a solvent. By leaching the major part of the polymers in a first stage with the solvent debinding process, a shorter thermal cycle is required for the degradation of the rest of the polymers, greatly speeding the overall removal of the polymeric binder prior to sintering. Several compounds (feedstocks) were prepared by mixing different polymer combinations with a ceramic powder. The viscosity of the compounds was measured. Filaments were prepared and their tensile properties were analysed. Finally, debinding by immersion in an organic solvent was investigated.
References
[1] T.F. McNulty, F. Mohammadi, A. Bandyopadhyay, D.J. Shanefield, S.C. Danforth, and A. Safari, Rapid Prototyping Journal, 4, 144 (1998).
[2] N. Venkataraman, S. Rangarajan, M.J. Matthewson, B. Harper, A. Safari, S.C. Danforth, G. Wu, N. Langrana, S. Guceri, and A. Yardimci, Rapid Prototyping Journal, 6, 244 (2000).
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 27 Jun 2017
EventPPS 2017- The Polymer Processing Society 33rd Annual Meeting - Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Duration: 26 Jun 201729 Jun 2017
http://www.pps2017dresden.de/home/

Conference

ConferencePPS 2017- The Polymer Processing Society 33rd Annual Meeting
Abbreviated titlePPS 2017
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityDresden
Period26/06/1729/06/17
Internet address

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