An in-situ crosslinking binder for binder jet additive manufacturing

Journal Article · Mon May 25 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Additive Manufacturing

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2020.101341· OSTI ID:1649053

Gilmer, Dustin ^[1]; Han, Lu  ^[2]; Hong, Eunice  ^[2]; Siddel, Derek ^[2]; Kisliuk, Alexander ^[2]; Cheng, Shiwang  ^[3]; Brunermer, Dan ^[4]; Elliott, Amy  ^[2]; Saito, Tomonori  ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
3. Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
4. ExOne Corp., North Huntingdon, PA (United States)

Additive Manufacturing (AM) of metals is a potentially disruptive technology that could significantly change the industrial supply chain. There are a limited number of AM methods capable of creating metal parts, and one method showing significant potential is Binder Jet AM (Binder Jetting). Binder Jetting utilizes an inkjet print head to deposit a binder fluid onto a powder bed and bind together powder particles into a desired geometry. This study investigates a new binder system consisting of a difunctional monomer, triethylene glycol dimethacrylate (TEG-DMA). TEG-DMA exhibits excellent printability with an Ohnesorge’s number of .258 making the Z number 3.876. During the thermal curing process, the difunctional monomer polymerizes and crosslinks at the onset temperature of 138 °C, becoming a solid dimethacrylate network. When the binder is utilized within the stainless-steel powder bed at 200 °C, it forms a network incorporating the stainless-steel particles, binding the powder into any specified geometry. Crosslinking the monomer within the stainless-steel 420 powder bed imparts a flexural strength of 1.0–3.3 MPa to the green part depending on the volume of monomer in the part. After sintering, the final stainless-steel parts results in a void fraction close to 60 % and carbon content below 0.4 %.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1649053
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1632209
• Journal Information: Additive Manufacturing, Vol. 35, Issue 1; ISSN 2214-8604
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE