Alumina Manufactured by Fused Filament Fabrication: A Comprehensive Study of Mechanical Properties and Porosity

Abstract

This article deals with a comprehensive study of the processing and mechanical properties of the ceramic material Al2O3 on Fused Filament Fabrication technology (FFF). It describes the basic input analyses of the material, such as TGA, FTIR, and MVR. These analyses enabled the design and testing of process parameters for the 3D printing of parts. The article also presents the post-processes, including the technological parameters required to finalize parts made from this material, i.e., chemical debinding in acetone at elevated temperatures + thermal debinding and sintering. The microhardness was measured on the processed samples, depending on the density of the inner filling. The resulting hardness had an almost linear relationship between the percentage of filler (20–40–60–80–100%) and the resulting microhardness (1382–2428 HV10). Flexural strength was also measured on the test specimens with different degrees of internal filling (80–90–100%). However, inner filling do not affect the flexural strength (316.12–327.84–331.61 MPa). The relative density of the final parts was measured on a ZEISS METROTOM 1500 CT machine and reached 99.54%.