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metal filament

Posted by ekaggrat 
metal filament
March 15, 2013 11:19PM
after seeing the laywood filament and finding a paper which said that it is basically made by mixing wooden powder with pla powder and extruding the mix , i was wondering if the same would be possible for metal powder??

i am no expert in metallurgy, it was just a thought that came to my mind...

any comments???
Re: metal filament
March 16, 2013 08:29AM
I can imagine it being extremely abrasive to the nozzle.
What exactly do you want to achieve with metal powder infused filament?
Re: metal filament
March 16, 2013 08:38AM
What are you trying to do? If you want plastic with metal in it, that would work great... But why would you want plastic with metal powder in it? It won't be very conductive and it won't look much like metal.

Do you mean this as a way to print metal parts? People have tried printing metal pastes similar to what you are describing, then curing the print to have a 100% metal object. This process has a huge amount of shrinkage and warpage, so what you can print turns out to be pretty limited.
Re: metal filament
March 16, 2013 12:50PM
@peteD

i was thinking something like on the lines of metal clay that is used by jewelers... And i was not aware of the shrinkage problem....how much would a part shrink after curing?
Re: metal filament
March 16, 2013 02:16PM
As usual when you ask a question like this you inevitably receive a few "It won't work", "its been tried before" comments, so I will counteract these with a positive one.

Mixing a hard powder / fibre with a soft plastic does work. Its actually quite common in industry using glass filled plastic, titanium dioxide, chalk, carbon black and many other materials. There's a quick guide here.

Plastic additives

If done right it improves strength and dimensional stability and reduces shrinkage (A hard non melting additive doesn't shrink much when cooling, so the % shrinkage is reduced).

If you think about it we are all probably printing with filament that isn't 100% ABS / PLA already.

There is no reason why this wouldn't work with a plastic / metal filament.


Helium Frog Website
Re: metal filament
March 21, 2013 09:30AM
Metal Injection Moulding may also be of interest to this discussion. A binder and metal mix is injected into a mould then fired.
3D printing such a mixture shouldn't be too much of a leap from this process.

The Wiki page is here
Wiki Page

Here is an example of a company that does it and some of the parts that are possible.
UK Company


Helium Frog Website
Re: metal filament
March 21, 2013 12:51PM
@martinprice2004

thanks for the insight on MIM ... was looking for something like this.....
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