3D Printed Materials for High Temperature Applications

Additive Manufacturing technologies are proving to be reliable alternatives to traditional ones. Because of their capability to allow short-run production with very low changeover costs and minimal setup, additive manufacturing technologies represent the best choice in case of low-volume highly customized productions. Furthermore, they represent the only alternative to manufacture lattice components, characterized by a complex meso-structure. To date, the main limitation of additive manufacturing is represented by a limited selection of printable materials. In addition, despite lots of information can be found about the mechanical characterization of the available printable materials, there is not as much information regarding their mechanical and geometrical behavior in high-temperature applications. Especially for thermoplastics, the lack of information limits the possibilities for the selection of adequate material, affecting the effectiveness of the design. In this work, a close inspection of the specific literature has been done, with the aim to gather information on the available printable materials suitable for high-temperature applications.