Metal part manufacturing by a combination of Fused Filament Fabrication and Gel Casting

The production of near full-density metal parts by the use of fused filament fabrication with metal powder filled filaments has become more and more popular due to its easy usage, low requirements for work safety and low investment costs. The disadvantage of this process is, however, the limitation in terms of component size and thin wall thicknesses due to sintering distortion and debinding kinetics. By using a gel casting process with a metal powder suspension and additive manufactured polymer molds made by Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), such limits can be overcome without compromising the free-form capabilities. Since no additional machine is used, the low investment cost and easy handling of the FFF process remains. We explain this process chain and show new results and gel cast metal parts made of stainless steel 316L and tool steel M2 with part weights of several hundred grams and above.