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Simulation of metallic parts by 3D printing using metallic powder–polylactide composite filament

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Abstract

This study uses a composite material with copper powder added in Polylactide (PLA) to manufacture the metallic parts by 3D printing. The content of composite filament is with 90% copper and 10% PLA in terms of mass percentage. In practices, the printed parts are first printed using a 3D printer and then they are sintered in a high-temperature furnace to remove the PLA and strengthen their mechanical and thermal properties of the printed part. In this study, the sintering process is divided into two processes: (1) the heating process in which printed part is heated such that the PLA in the printed part is decomposed and then combusted away, and (2) the sintering process in which the contacting particles are bonded to form a solid object. A 3D numerical simulation has been performed to study the heat transfer characteristics of the system during heating process. In this study, a completion fraction is defined to indicate the local completion level between the thermal decomposition and the combustion reactions of the PLA in the printed parts.

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Abbreviations

\(T_{{\text{d}}}\) :

Thermal decomposition temperature

\(T_{{\text{i}}}\) :

Ignition temperature

\(T_{{\text{f}}}\) :

Local temperature in the filament domain

\(T_{0}\) :

Initial temperature

\(T_{{\text{H}}}\) :

Final temperature

\(T_{{\text{A}}}\) :

Absolute temperature

\(T\) :

Temperature field

\(C\) :

Heat capacity

\(k\) :

Thermal conductivity

\({\mathbf{q}}\) :

Heat flux by convection

\({\mathbf{u}}\) :

Velocity vector

\(\rho\) :

Density

α :

Thermal diffusivity

g:

Graphite powder

c:

Copper filament

1:

The state of raw copper powder/PLA filament

2:

The state of the sintered parts

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under Grant MOST 109-2622-E-006-011-CC2, is highly appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1, Ta-Shieh Road, Tainan, 70101, Taiwan, ROC

    Chin-Hsiang Cheng, Cherng-Chyi Loh & Yi-Jie Zhang

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  1. Chin-Hsiang Cheng
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  2. Cherng-Chyi Loh
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  3. Yi-Jie Zhang
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Correspondence to Chin-Hsiang Cheng.

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Cheng, CH., Loh, CC. & Zhang, YJ. Simulation of metallic parts by 3D printing using metallic powder–polylactide composite filament. Prog Addit Manuf 7, 495–508 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40964-022-00287-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40964-022-00287-6

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