Analysis of printing parameters for metal additive manufactured parts through Direct Ink Writing process

Abstract

Direct Ink Writing is an Additive Manufacturing process in which a metal ink is continuously extruded to built-up a green metal part. Therefore, a debinding and sintering process is required to obtain the final metal part. This thermal process produces a shrinkage of the green printed part according to several material and printing parameters. In this paper, the influence of printing process planning on the width of printed rods for a copper ink is analyzed by means of a Design of Experiments procedure to optimize the printing and equipment parameters and characterize the shrinkage after the sintering process