Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Discuss the technical details of an "open source" community-driven design of a polywell reactor.

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DeltaV
Posts: 2245
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:05 am

Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by DeltaV »

Filamet(TM) metal-infused filament with Bronze, Copper (soon Brass, Nickel-Silver?) for producing high-density metal objects, sintered in a kiln, after being printed on a cheap, run-of-the-mill FDM printer. Wondering about shrinkage/deformation from heating, but this sounds promising for non-m/billionaires.

http://www.thevirtualfoundry.com/

Image

Diogenes
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Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Re: Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by Diogenes »

DeltaV wrote:Filamet(TM) metal-infused filament with Bronze, Copper (soon Brass, Nickel-Silver?) for producing high-density metal objects, sintered in a kiln, after being printed on a cheap, run-of-the-mill FDM printer. Wondering about shrinkage/deformation from heating, but this sounds promising for non-m/billionaires.

http://www.thevirtualfoundry.com/

Image

Now that is very interesting. Thanks for posting that.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

prestonbarrows
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Re: Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by prestonbarrows »

At scales to be at all relevant, say, 12" cube width and above, plain old machining is practical and cheap. Porous, sintered messes based on plastics will be dimensionally unstable and a horror show under vacuum.

hanelyp
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Re: Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by hanelyp »

How does this compare to lost-PLA metal casting? I'm guessing not nearly as good.
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KitemanSA
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Location: OlyPen WA

Re: Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by KitemanSA »

What would happen if we printed with YBCO infused PLA on a spherical table? Maybe we could print a proper, superconducting bowed cube-octahedral Polywell in one go. If we switch between plain PLA for the running surface, copper infused for the case, and YBCO infused for the windings…

usesbiggerwords
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Re: Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by usesbiggerwords »

DeltaV wrote:
Sat Jul 09, 2016 4:37 pm
http://www.thevirtualfoundry.com/
Looking at the list of "Customers who trust", it's all universities and government agencies. Perhaps this is telling...

jrvz
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Re: Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by jrvz »

“ In the case of copper, the highest density achievable would be about 97 density with 15 percent shrinkage, but shrinkage can be kept to under 7 percent with 10 to 12 percent porosity.”

So, definitely not vacuum tight. And I don’t see anything about printing superconductors.
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KitemanSA
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Location: OlyPen WA

Re: Sintered metal objects from a standard FDM 3D printer

Post by KitemanSA »

jrvz wrote:
Thu Dec 14, 2023 6:36 pm
“ In the case of copper, the highest density achievable would be about 97 density with 15 percent shrinkage, but shrinkage can be kept to under 7 percent with 10 to 12 percent porosity.”

So, definitely not vacuum tight. And I don’t see anything about printing superconductors.
Nitrogen (LN2) doesn’t diffuse much.
Has anyone ever even suggested YBCO to them?

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