Filament-extrusion 3D printing of hardmetal and cermet parts

Additive manufacturing is fast-growing and a most interesting fabrication technology also for parts prepared out of composite materials. We recently reported on the first ever conducted extrusion-printing techniques on WC-Co-based hardmetals and Ti(C,N)-based cermets. While both materials were prepared with multiphase starting mixtures blended in an in-house drum milling procedure, the present work reports a study using two commercially available starting powders (RTP powders) used for fused-filament fabrication (FFF) of composite parts. In addition, the parts of the present study have a more complicated geometry, not accessible to pressing and MIM techniques.