About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2026 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2026)
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| Symposium
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2026 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2026)
|
| Presentation Title |
Metal Viscous Thread Printing |
| Author(s) |
Brett Alexander Emery, Jacob Miske, Cole Carson, Keith Brown, Jeff Lipton |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Brett Alexander Emery |
| Abstract Scope |
Metal foams are valued for their thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties, but conventional production limits gradient structures and requires costly infrastructure. Viscous Thread Printing (VTP) exploits mechanical instabilities during Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) to produce gradated, stochastic foams at the desktop scale. Previously limited to polymers, here we demonstrate metal foams with programmable porosity gradients in copper, bronze, and steel. We combine VTP with a metal-polymer process, termed metal viscous thread printing (M-VTP), reaching relative densities from 0.18 to 0.63. Copper foams exhibited a 10x range in stiffness and half the thermal conductivity of rectilinear copper lattices, while maintaining similar electrical conductivity. They demonstrated mechanical densification behavior for energy absorption and over 10x increase in specific toughness compared to conventionally printed copper. M-VTP specimens showed six times fewer post-processing cracks than rectilinear lattices suggesting greater robustness. M-VTP enables desktop-scale production of stochastic metal foams with programmable properties across alloy systems. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Undecided |