/diy/ - Do It Yourself

anons, dont attempt to sinter aluminum PLA, unless you ant a puddle of nothing in the end
sintering is nothing as you guys describe, its a very simple process
dmls is directly melting little beads of metal with a powerful laser into each other (thats the LS of sls or dmls) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwFspzVGUF4
the metal has no crystal structure, so its more like a ceramic right now (metal ceramic is interesting, but the cool ones are made from aluminum oxide and zirconia at very high temps), many companies have their own methods for fully sintering (moving from green to brown) these things, typically by baking the metal.
there's also metal powder and binder, that iro3d process where you melt a weaker metal into the powder, or casting (from pla or sla casting resins), all which have their own design limitations and considerations (this is why most sls/dmsl metal prints still have support material for sindtering/resinderting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzBRYsiyxjI

BASF Ultrafuse and Virtual Foundry can be printed on a desktop 3d printer, but they use a 90%+ fill and since they were put in a thermoplastic in order to print, they need to be sintered in a process more like recasting by melting off all the pla into sand or some material, similar to how crucible materials absorb all the shit left in metal refining, so they wont turn into a pile of mush.
you could also cast some bismuth materials in plastic molds, which I find interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=770cSWbmBRg
this exists too, but RFID gas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_jcYga95aY
there's also welding, like whatever musk or nasa did with the robot arms and melting metal in its free form. I dont trust it, all the info is patented and it seems like the caveman process with big seams ready to burst when its used, I cant even find out if they sinter those things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKkcBoSeUOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLndYWw5_y8