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Posted · Printing in metal?

OK, goofy question time here...

I have begun to look into metal casting a bit and I am quite surprised to learn that some alloys of pewter have a melting point below the 250 C of my Ultimaker. So this gets the gears turning and I imagine casting the pewter into filament but not just filament, something with notches or spirals or some design to allow it to be pushed through the Bowden tube. If we did those two things, could we not print in pewter? I welcome your replies!

Les

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Gooday Les

    Would the pewter be too inflexible? Hard for the bowden to bend and then push the pewter through.

    It would be awesome if you could though.

    Owen

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Gooday Les

    Would the pewter be too inflexible? Hard for the bowden to bend and then push the pewter through.

    It would be awesome if you could though.

    Owen

     

    Ty for your reply, Owen. I agree that a simple coil of 2.85 mm pewter would be too inflexible, so what I was thinking was to make stranded or notched or spiral somehow patterns of it. You know how copper wire is really hard to bend if it's solid and bends easily if stranded? Something like that.

    Les

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    I think the main problem is to get the layers bond together, think about oxidation. Maybe if you have a closed printer, flooded with nitrogen. Most solder has flux integrated and still it can be tricky to attach new solder to older solder.

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Oh, and another problem is the high thermal conductivity compared to our beloved plastic ;)

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Well I'm thinking that those problems can be overcome, for example see this new exotic filament:

    Copper and Bronze Filament

    Note that the stuff discussed in that article is *not* Copper Fill or Brass Fill, instead it has a very high metal content. Check it out!

    Les

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Oh wow they have it for sale now!

    metal filament for sale

    I'm going to get some.

    Les

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Yeah but you need a furnace to remove the plastic part and fuse the metal. If you need something extra it's better to just cast a pla mold and do a casting with the other metal. The cheapest furnace I saw was around 2k.

    For that I would just use steel filament from colorfabb and do a electrolysis bath of the final touch. Specially since colorfabb steel filament it's slightly magnetic and that should help improve the bath finish. But for that baths you also need a 2k stuff with more nasty chemicals.

    For that pewter I think you would need a totally different hotend specifically made for that. Or maybe a powerfull laser that fuses the metal as soon it's extruded near the tip :D

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    Posted · Printing in metal?
    There are two ways to use Filamet™ The feature that makes Filamet 100% unique is that you can heat-process it to remove all of the binders, leaving you with a 99+% pure metal object (Process #2). But, many users have found that simply Printing and Polishing produces a striking metal finish that suits their needs and then some. The high quality finish is the direct result of Filamet™ having the highest metal content of any printing product you can buy, 88.8%.

    So you don't *have to* fire it in a kiln, you can just use it fresh off the printer. I am hoping i can use it in my ultimaker 2+ which has a PTFE coupler and is therefore not an all metal hotend.

    Les

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Yeah, that's just a high concentrated plastic + metal particles. The layer bond strength will be just like normal plastic (unless you furnace it). And to make it 'shine' you need to postprocess it. So it's pretty much like others metal filaments like the oones from colorfabb but with a higher metal concentration.

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    Right, which is a whole lot better. It might even be electrically conductive although I don't see any statement to that effect on their web site. They do claim that the appearance of unfired samples that are polished blows ColorFabb out of the water. So it looks better at the very least and might even be electrically conductive! (we can hope so anyway).

    Les

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    Posted · Printing in metal?

    The only thing is the cost. It costs about four times as much as the ColorFabb product, at $85.00 USD per half pound. Thats about $425.0 USD per kilogram! That's the same as Functionalize's graphene filament.

    Les

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