Slurry based additive manufacturing of aluminium alloys

Additive Manufacturing of metal parts based on binder-containing slurries allow for a great materials variety. With this approach it is basically possible to process all sinterable materials like copper or even use powder mixtures. Nevertheless, there are still a few restrictions in materials selection due to the used binder and the requirements of the sintering step. Aluminium alloys especially are difficult to process since the binder is usually removed thermally which can lead to unwanted contaminations, i. e. a high oxygen content. At Fraunhofer IFAM Dresden the debinding step was optimized to reach low oxygen contents for an AlSi1 alloy. The developed process step show an almost complete debinding with final oxygen levels down to 0.18 wt.% in the sintered material. The new binder-powder system is suitable for processing via 3D screen printing which opens up a pathway for the manufacturing of intricate parts for thermal management applications.