Lower-cost metal 3D printing

Until recently, metal 3D printing was a very expensive proposition, partly because of metal powder handing. However, there has been a technology convergence that promises much lower cost for certain types of applications. Rich Cameron and I have a new LinkedIn Learning course that has just released, Additive Manufacturing:Metal 3D Printing, that will give you an overview of the latest offerings.

Most of these are close cousins of metal injection molding (MIM) technology. In MIM, a mix of powder and binder is injection molded, not too differently from plastic injection molding. Then, the molded part is "debound" to remove the plastic and sintered to get a solid part. This takes tooling and mold creation, though, which is expensive.

But now there are filaments that use high concentrations of metal powders in a plastic binder. This allow you to use a filament 3D printer to create a similar part to the one that comes out of an MIM mold. You still have to debind and sinter the part, but this can either be outsourced or be taken in-house for more reasonable amounts than one might think.

There are filaments that work on consumer-level 3D printers, and systems that use proprietary end to end print, debind, and sinter machines. There are also machines that spray binder on MIM-like metal powders.

There are design tradeoffs one has to make to use the technology effectively. The parts shrink during debinding and sintering, and there are some limitations on part geometry. Here's a movie from the course to help you with that.

The course also discusses the relative merits of a cross-section of available metal 3D printing techniques, which ones are more conducive to higher volume, and the like. If benchtop systems will work for you, there are many similarities to other filament-based techniques. You can check out our other courses about filament printing for more background.

We appreciated the support of the many people in the industry who supplied us with images or patiently answered questions about how things work. The photo at the top is filament and a metal "swirly cone" from The Virtual Foundry.