| Abstract Scope |
Metal foam has attracted worldwide attention because of its lightweight and unprecedented functional properties. Traditional manufacturing approaches can only fabricate metal foam with inhomogeneous distributions and shapes of pores, causing difficulties in tailoring the properties. In this study, we leveraged the innovative printing-debinding-sintering process to fabricate the metal form materials with tailorable properties using the commercially affordable filament. Specifically, the filament comprised of 316L stainless steel powders and a binder system was printed at 200 ℃ to achieve the green builds, followed by catalytic and thermal debinding processes to produce the brown parts. Final metal parts were obtained after being sintered with temperature up to 1380 ℃. After that, the dimensional shrinkage, porosity, microstructure, and compressive properties of the samples would be characterized to elucidate the process-structure-property relationship. This study will provide great insights into structural design and fabrication of metal form materials using the high-efficiency and low-cost processes. |