Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of M2 High-speed Steel Fabricated by Fused Filament Fabrication

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) can produce highly loaded filled metal powders by extruding polymeric filaments to create green parts, and then debinding and sintering to produce metal parts. The filaments employed in this paper were prepared from M2 high-speed steel (M2 HSS) powders and polyformaldehyde -based binder, which have been less discussed in previous researches of M2 HSS in FFF printing. As prepared by FFF, the green part was first catalytic debinding under oxalic acid atmosphere, followed by thermal debinding and sintering from a protective atmosphere of N2 gas. The hardness of the specimens reached a maximum of 60.40 HRC and the average coefficient of friction (COF) was 0.481 under the condition of sintering at 1270 ℃ for 1 h, which was analyzed by microstructure. The research shows that FFF is a potential additive manufacturing technique which could fabricate M2 HSS with excellent mechanical properties.