Material development for additive manufacturing of titanium components via material extrusion

In this work, the development of a process chain to produce titanium components via Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) will be introduced applying eco-friendly partially water-soluble binder systems. The focus of this study was the influence of different thermoplastic binder components on the properties of the feedstocks. It was found that short-chain fatty acids decrease the viscosity of the feedstocks and extraordinarily increase the flexibility of the filaments at the expense of hardness. Printing of the feedstocks showed promising results, even complex geometries could be achieved with a high level of detail. After subsequent debinding and thermal densification, titanium components were produced with a density of more than 99.9 % of the theoretical value.