Stainless Steel https://popups.uliege.be/esaform21/index.php?id=4367 Index terms fr 0 Processability of metal-filament through polymer FDM machine https://popups.uliege.be/esaform21/index.php?id=2114 FDM is one of the simplest and cheapest available additive technologies, mostly limited to polymeric materials. Metal-FDM process may overcome this limit using a metal filament bounded with polymer, which is removed through debinding and sintering treatments. Producing metal components using an economic machine would make it possible to produce non-critical components with complex geometry at an industrial level and at low-cost. This work aims to investigate whether a low-cost commercial 3D printer may be able to print a metal filament and what are the achievable density and the shrinkage on the final part. An experimental campaign (24 factorial plan) was performed, considering as variable factors the nozzle temperature, the infill pattern, the print speed and the layer thickness. Statistical tools as the boxplot for determining outliers and the analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to evaluate the results, identifying which process parameters ad their interactions affect the selected indicators (density and shrinkage). The results show that the conversion of a low-cost FDM machine from polymer to metal filament is possible, generating repeatable and stable results. The process is faster and less expensive than the existing powder-bed-fusion based metal AM technology. The best combination of printing parameters was identified considering as target point the density of the “traditional” AISI 316L steel. Different behaviors in terms of shrinkage were identified: trends are stable and very similar for X and Y directions, independently from the printing parameters, while the interaction between temperature and other parameters causes higher variability along the Z-axis. Tue, 23 Mar 2021 12:52:28 +0100 Mon, 12 Apr 2021 10:33:35 +0200 https://popups.uliege.be/esaform21/index.php?id=2114 Experimental Investigation of Process Forces and Part Quality for Fine Blanking of Stainless Steel with Inductive Heating https://popups.uliege.be/esaform21/index.php?id=2575 Fine blanking is a highly productive process of industrial mass production with which high quality components in particular but not exclusively for the automotive industry are produced. The manufacturing process faces its limits at elevated tensile strengths of the materials to be processed. Consequently, high-strength steels can currently only be fine blanked to a limited extent. This can be overcome by lowering the flow stress of high-strength steels by means of inductive heating. A steel of high importance especially for industries with high hygiene standards such as medical and nutrition production is the stainless steel X5CrNi18-10 (1.4301). As a metastable austenitic steel which can initiate cutting impact on the press through martensitization, fine blanking of stainless steel is a challenge. X5CrNi18-10 is not a high-strength steel per se but becomes difficult to process due to the high hardness of the martensite phase, known as transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) effect. Thus, in order to combine the possible advantages of the fine blanking process with inductive heating and the important properties of stainless steel, fine blanking of this steel was investigated with inductive heating prior to the fine blanking. The process forces and product quality properties such as die roll were investigated and found to be advantageous in comparison to non-heated fine blanking specimens of the same steel. The process forces and the die roll height decreased due to the heating. Wed, 24 Mar 2021 18:19:07 +0100 Fri, 02 Apr 2021 14:51:13 +0200 https://popups.uliege.be/esaform21/index.php?id=2575