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In situ visualization of aluminum sintering for binder jetting by X-ray transmission

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Abstract

Binder jetting (BJ) technology is expected to play an important role in the field of additive manufacturing due to its high productivity and low printer cost. However, BJ is a double-stage process and requires sintering as well as printing, which limits the material capability. Specifically, aluminum parts manufactured by BJ are currently not ready for practical use, despite the method’s versatility and popularity, because aluminum surface oxides make sintering problematic. The sintering process of an aluminum brown body made with BJ using synchrotron radiation was observed to understand the sintering mechanism, with a focus on the behavior of the aluminum liquid phase, which contributes to the destruction of surface oxides. The results demonstrated that the layered structure formed during BJ printing disappeared in a few tens of seconds to a few minutes as the aluminum liquid phase spread and aluminum particles rearranged. The results also showed that X-ray flashes appeared during heating and cooling, which indicates changes in the crystal plane. This study provides information on the desired particle arrangement in the green body and provides suggestions for the design of the sintering process of aluminum BJ.

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Acknowledgements

The synchrotron radiation experiments were performed at the Hyogo beamline (BL08B2) of SPring-8 with the approval of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (Proposal No. 2020A3422). This work was supported by the Hyogo Science and Technology Association. The authors would like to express their gratitude for the Association’s technical support. The authors also would like to thank Toyo Aluminium K.K. for providing aluminum powder.

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  1. Ricoh Company, Ltd., 2-7-1 Izumi, Kanagawa, 243-0460, Ebina, Japan

    Daichi Yamaguchi & Naoki Oya

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  1. Daichi Yamaguchi
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  2. Naoki Oya
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception, design, and analysis. Material preparation was performed by NO. Synchrotron X-ray imaging was performed by all authors. EBSD and X-ray CT were performed by DY. The first draft of the manuscript was written by DY, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Daichi Yamaguchi.

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Yamaguchi, D., Oya, N. In situ visualization of aluminum sintering for binder jetting by X-ray transmission. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 121, 3965–3975 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09601-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09601-6

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