Toward high quality and stable production in metal binder jetting: Process mapping for 17-4PH steel☆

Metal Binder Jetting (MBJ) has emerged as a promising additive manufacturing (AM) technology for the efficient production of large quantities of high-quality industrial components. Nevertheless, questions remain regarding its capacity to compete with other AM technologies in terms of delivering high-precision, repeatable, and stable outputs. This study addresses these gaps by conducting a comprehensive experimental investigation on the performance of a cutting-edge turnkey MBJ system, toward the optimization of 17-4PH stainless steel parts’ quality. Focus is given on the impact of the powder pre-processing and critical printing parameters, including powder temperature, chamber humidity, and layer thickness. The findings of this study present significant contribution to both scientific understanding and industrial application. The results reveal that layer thickness is the most influential parameter for achieving superior density and hardness, providing a roadmap for the optimization of the part performance. A 50 μm layer thickness yields approximately 10 % higher hardness and more consistent density across parts. Simultaneously, the study demonstrates that there are coupled roles of additional parameters, including humidity conditions, that cannot be ignored to ensure robust, and high-precision production. The chamber humidity control could lead to absolute density improvements of about 1.5 % on average. These results underline the potential of MBJ to deliver high-precision and stable production, provided that the process parameters are carefully managed. This work highlights MBJ's competitive advantage and its capability to address industrial demands for robust and repeatable additive manufacturing solutions.