Characteristics Of Porous Ti6Al4V Materials Produced By Three-Dimensional Fiber Deposition And Bio Gelcasting

Porous metals and metallic foams are used in numerous industrial applications such as lightweight structures, biomedical implants, filters, electrodes, catalysts and heat exchangers. The background of this study is the development of titanium alloy biomedical implants. As manufacturing routes for porous Ti6Al4V structures, three-dimensional fiber deposition (robocasting) and bio gelcasting have been studied. Both routes apply thermal debinding and conventional furnace sintering but differ in the way green porous parts are produced. Robocasting green part are manufactured in an additive way by the extrusion of a powder-based paste layer by layer. In this way complex shaped parts with controlled porous architecture can be obtained. In bio gel casting a foam is obtained from a powder loaded suspension containing foaming agents which is mechanically stirred, moulded, gelated and dried. The resulting material is characterized by a broad pore size distribution. The compressive mechanical properties of both Ti6Al4V porous metals are presented.