Study on the ceramic fused filament fabrication process and the built parts’ static mechanical properties

Abstract

Ceramic fused filament fabrication (CF3), a type of ceramic additive manufacturing technology, uses ceramic powder/polymer composite filament as raw material to fabricate densified ceramic parts through shaping-debinding-sintering (S-D-S) process, and it owns broad application and development prospects. However, the existing study on the static mechanical properties of CF3 parts is still in the basic stage, lacking comprehensiveness and systematicity. In this paper, self-made zirconia/polymer composite filament with a five-component binder system was developed, and the ME equipment was used to shape the green specimens with different processing parameters (layer thickness, solid loading and infill angle) in order to verify the formability of the composite filament; They were then debinded and sintered using the box sintering furnace so as to obtain the sintered CF3 specimens; Finally, experimental studies on their physical and static properties were carried out to investigate the effects of processing parameters. The results showed that increasing the solid loading of zirconia significantly reduced the dimensional shrinkage of the sintered specimens; When the layer thickness increased from 0.2 to 0.3 mm, the compressive strength decreased from 358.66 to 213.40 MPa, and the bending strength decreased from 456.01 to 293.12 MPa; When the infill angle increased from 0° to 90°, the bending strength of the specimens decreased from 456.01 to 120.08 MPa; The Vickers hardness of the sintered specimens was independent, and it has the characteristic of isotropy.