Thermomechanical Treatment of Metal Wires for Application in Additive Manufacturing

Nowadays, one of the popular manufacturing methods in the world is three-dimensional printing. Various 3D printing techniques, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), have been expanding day by day, and using all sorts of materials as well as metals that are of particular interest. For the current methods of metal 3D printing there appears to be some problems such as high energy consumption and high costs along with the occurrence of metallurgical defects. This paper studies the possibility of using metal wires as a 3D printer input material and investigates the material design considerations and microstructure evolution. Since the viscosity of molten alloys is not high enough, unlike the polymers, it is very difficult to deposit the molten metal in a layer-wise manner. Extrusion in the semi-solid state is a way in which the pre-processed metal wire will have good deposition characteristics. The results of this study showed that by using a specific thermomechanical procedure, the metallic filaments can be produced with a favorable extrudability. The effect of process control on the rheological behavior of the filament has also been studied and the desired microstructure was obtained to have a successful deposition process.