Influence of Powder Packing Density on Binder Saturation and Wetting Behavior in Metal Binder Jetting

Metal Binder Jetting (MBJ) has an increasing attention in additive manufacturing because of its serial production potential. Finding the most suitable parameterization in MBJ and develop pre-printing tests, can reduce the iteration stages in material-specific process development, which saves costs, effort as well as material resources and printing capacity. The powder binder interaction of five powders at different packing densities were determined and the wetting behaviors were compared. The equilibrium saturation, the wetting rate and the initial wetting time were analyzed. In order to understand the nature of the resulting porosity at low packing density, various samples were sintered and compared by micrographs. The results show that an increasing packing density decreases the initial wetting time, increases the equilibrium saturation and lowers the saturation rate. The relationship between wetting behavior and printing parameters, as well as the effect of drying must be investigated further in subsequent studies.