Corrosion and material properties of 316L stainless steel produced by material extrusion technology

Material Extrusion (ME) multi-step additive manufacturing of highly filled metal filament Ultrafuse 316L offers a notable alternative to cutting-edge additive technologies of metal alloys. It allows the creation of metal objects with debinding and sintering processes. Especially Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) technologies using laser or high-energy electron beams require costly maintenance, professional operators, and demanding process conditions during printing. On the other hand, such requirements do not incorporate ME printing. This study aims to comprehensively investigate and describe the behavior of material printed out of Ultrafuse 316L stainless steel filament on an affordable ME office-friendly printer. The main focus was on tests of fracture toughness, porosity, and corrosion resistance determined by the Tafel extrapolation method. The secondary objective was verifying the mechanical properties found in other studies (differing in results). For this purpose, several sets of fully dense samples were printed, debinded, and tested.