Filament Development for Metallic Fused Filament Fabrication of Aluminium Alloys

Material Extrusion with filaments, Fused Filament Fabrication - FFF, is the most widespread additive manufacturing technology. This counts mainly for polymers, since the use of this technology for metal and ceramic powders is still in its early days. For several metals, filaments can be bought in the market. Aluminium has a low sintering temperature already in the range of the temperatures for thermal debinding of many feedstocks and needs special sintering regimes. To meet these special requirements, a feedstock for the production of highly filled aluminium filaments was developed. The printed parts are debinded by solvents. Here, the following results are presented: 1) rheological behaviour of the feedstock, 2) debinding behaviour with emphasis on the selection of solvents and 3) printing performance.