- Tungsten carbide can now be printed without melting or destroying its strength
- A laser and heated wire soften metal just enough to bond layers
- Avoiding full melting reduces defects that previously blocked metal additive manufacturing
Most people know about 3D printers making plastic parts, toys or simple tools, but printing metal is much more difficult.
The reason is that metals require extremely high heat and react badly when heated and cooled too quickly.
But in a major breakthrough, researchers at Hiroshima University have now shown that tungsten carbide cobalt can now be 3D printed using a different method.
Instead of melting the metal completely, the process heats it just enough to soften it. This enables the material to bond layer by layer without losing its internal structure.
The method uses a laser and a heated wire to soften a solid carbide rod during printing.
A thin nickel alloy layer is also placed between printed layers to help them hold together more reliably.
Because the metal is not completely melted, the printed result avoids many of the errors seen in previous experiments.
The researchers report that the final printed material reaches a hardness of over 1400HV without introducing defects or degradation.
This level of hardness is only slightly below materials such as sapphire and diamond, which is unusual for 3D printed metal parts.
Tungsten carbide is widely used in cutting and construction tools and is one of the hardest engineering materials used today.
These tools are usually made by shaping solid blocks of material, which creates a large amount of waste.
Being able to 3D print flawless industrial grade carbides can reduce material waste and enable parts to be closer to their final shape.
The current process still struggles with cracks in some cases, and complex shapes are not yet easy to manufacture.
“The approach of forming metallic materials by softening them instead of melting them completely is new,” said Keita Marumoto, an assistant professor at Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering.
“It has the potential to be applied not only to cemented carbides, which were the focus of this study, but also to other materials.”
Despite the progress, this work doesn’t mean that tungsten parts will soon be printed in everyday environments.
Metal printing remains slower, more expensive and more difficult to control than plastic printing.
The researchers say further process refinements are needed to reduce cracks and allow more complex designs.
The idea of softening rather than melting metals seems promising, but its real value will depend on whether it can scale, iterate reliably and work outside of test environments.
Via Tom’s hardware
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