Thermoplastic 3D Printing of Hardmetals

Hardmetals or cemented carbides are a widely-used materials in cutting and wear applications. Here complex shaped parts or the production of prototypes is difficult, expensive and in some cases not possible at all. Thus, additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing technologies could be used. One of the AM technologies is thermoplastic 3D printing in which with hardmetal powders filled thermoplastic droplets are deposited selectively and fused on a substrate to form complex shaped parts. By adjusting process parameters the droplet characteristics, such as the droplet height and diameter, can be varied in the ranges of 100 - 200 µm (height) or 350 - 800 µm (diameter). Within this study two different hardmetal compositions and suitable thermoplastic mixtures were prepared and simple as well as complex shaped test parts were printed. The results showed that fully dense and complex shaped parts are possible to print with the developed thermoplastic 3D printing technology having comparable properties.