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Highly Conductive Three‐Dimensional Printing With Low‐Melting Metal Alloy Filament
Author(s) -
Andersen Kimball,
Dong Yue,
Kim Woo Soo
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
advanced engineering materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1527-2648
pISSN - 1438-1656
DOI - 10.1002/adem.201700301
Subject(s) - materials science , fused filament fabrication , nozzle , extrusion , alloy , fabrication , 3d printing , electrical conductor , thermal conductivity , protein filament , composite material , mechanical engineering , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , engineering
It has been challenging to develop a new functional material with high conductivity for the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) based 3D printing technology. The proposed low‐melting metal alloy filament provides the key to overcome the challenges including printability and conductivity. For this report, two metal alloys are designed to evaluate their suitability for FFF. In order to achieve material compatibility of the designed filament material with the nozzle materials, different nozzle materials are also investigated using thermal analysis. Then, a custom extrusion nozzle is suggested using thermal modeling to optimize the melt‐zone for reliable extrusion. And finally, 3D printed circuit is demonstrated from a 3D printed plastic case to the integrated printed‐alloy connections for the light‐emitting device.