Fdm Metal 3d Printing

When it comes to strength and durability there s nothing quite like metal.

Fdm metal 3d printing.

Metal 3d printing is considered the apex of all 3d printing. Typically these machines use metal powder as feedstock forming a green shape with a binder before sintering or directly sintering the metal using high powered lasers directly in the build chamber. The two technologies have a lot of similarities. There are many ways technology has helped bring some of the most difficult applications to the forefront.

It represents the largest installed base of 3d printers globally and is often the first technology people are exposed to. This technology is offering the possibility to print diverse materials from plastic to metal. Fdm is one of the most popular 3d printing technologies. This filament is a combination of thermoplastic material and metallic particles.

In this article the basic principles and the key aspects of the technology are presented. Similar to the wildly popular plastic based fdm process filament is heated and drawn through a nozzle and then deposited layer by layer. The first patent for metal 3d printing was dmls direct metal laser sintering and it was filed in the 1990s by the german company eos. This technology represents the widest installed base of 3d printers globally.

It is a great option for prototyping but also for series production of functional parts. It is an affordable 3d printing solution. 3d printing metal filaments that have the highest metal content of any filament on the market today debind and sinter filamet prints to create full metal parts. Ever since then engineers have come up with other methods for printing with metal some of which are entirely unique and some that are just different enough from dmls to be awarded their own patents.

Both use a laser to scan and selectively fuse or melt the metal powder particles bonding them together and building a part layer by layer. Filament is fed from a large spool through a moving heated printer extruder head and is deposited on the growing work. These metal filaments can be used on any 3d printer. And is therefore the first technology that a newbie in additive manufacturing is made familiar with.

Fdm is the most widely used 3d printing technology. Fdm 3d printing belongs to the material extrusion family. With the filamet metal filaments of the virtual foundry consisting of a base metal and a biodegradable and ecological polymer pla and an oven sintering process it is now possible to obtain all metal parts using 3d fdm printing. Use our metal filaments in fused filament fabrication printers and create pure metal parts 3d printing using metal filaments.

Overview of metal extrusion for 3d printing metal extrusion in additive manufacturing is a fairly new process.