Paste Sintering

So I haven't really seen a lot about this. Seems like using a metallic paste in a similar manner to plastic printing would be a bit more efficient and make material interchangeability easy. You could essentially use a plastic-based RepRap with an additional extruder/sinterer mounted on it (and a few other modifications, of course).

Most information that I've seen focuses on the silver-based pastes used for electronics but I did find this expired patent:

[patft.uspto.gov]

It seems like you could make a crude but usable paste essentially from metal powder, Vaseline, and antifreeze.

Admittedly, I don't know a whole lot about this subject. Thoughts?

... some years ago I've mixed a paste for micro-brazing, that were usable for 3D-printing too, but it was pretty expensive, as mixed mainly from 30 microns big 80:20-gold:tin-microspheres, maybe 1 percent of gold-dust and as binder dexpanthenol and some droplets aqua dest.

For testing with a cheaper or better available material I'll start with common soldering paste - and then maybe mix it with some other (not melting) dust for higher thixotropy while melted and for higher structural stability ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]