An innovative machine for Fused Deposition Modeling of metals and advanced ceramics

The design of a new additive manufacturing (AM) system based on extrusion and 3D deposition of a mixture of metal (or advanced ceramic) powder and polymeric binder is described in this paper. The proposed system is totally innovative in terms of combination of deposited work material, extrusion system (head and nozzle), and deposition work table, which is based on a 5-axes parallel kinematics machine (PKM). The extrusion head and nozzle have been designed in order to be able to extrude high viscosity mixtures with low polymeric content. The 5-axes PKM is aimed at obtaining a good surface quality of the deposited work and reducing the need for supports during deposition. After the deposition, the material is de-binded and sintered to nearly the density of the solid material as-cast. The design and kinematics of the machine and especially the PKM table is described in this paper, the main design issues are discussed and some preliminary extrusion and sintering results are presented.