From the course: Additive Manufacturing: Metal 3D Printing

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Part shrinkage and density

Part shrinkage and density

From the course: Additive Manufacturing: Metal 3D Printing

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Part shrinkage and density

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- [Female Voice] Filament like metal 3D printing systems use a mixture that's around 90% metal by weight. However, metal's about eight times denser than typical plastic carriers. That means that the input material is around 60% metal by volume or to put it another way about 40% of the volume will be lost while the plastic comes out of the print. Thus the final print will be about 60% of the original volume. This is how the original part, the metal part, and the binder would look if we thought about them as cubes. - [Male Voice] If shrinkage were the same in all directions each dimension of the print would shrink by about the cube root of 0.6. This would work out to a shrinkage of about 15% in each direction. However, typically there will be more shrinkage in the vertical dimension because of the flattening effects of gravity. And that's a little less in the horizontal dimensions. This is an additional consideration when…

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