Solid Freeform Fabrication of Stainless Steel Using Fab@Home

Metal or ceramic parts can be solid freeform fabricated (SFF) using powdered material processing techniques. A slurry of the powdered material is deposited in a layer-by-layer fashion, and then sintered. We demonstrate this process using a 17-4 PH stainless steel slurry deposited via robotically controlled syringe in the low-cost Fab@Home rapid prototyper. Completed parts had densities as high as 90% volume fraction and tensile strength as high as 35% of the pure solid. Details of the process as well as a number of samples of different geometries are shown.Mechanical Engineerin