Toward an Accessible Electrical Conductivity Characterisation Method for Additively Manufactured Conductors

The use of metal Additive Manufacturing to form electrical winding and busbar components is gaining popularity as both a prototyping and a production tool due to the ability to realise complex geometry, unparalleled by other production methods, and advantages in digital rather than physical tooling. However, the many different manufacturing processes and feed-stock materials available, the number of parameters attributed to each process, and differences among Additive Manufacturing practitioners leads to significant variation in the resulting electrical material properties of fabricated components. Such data is critical at the design stage and throughout production for quality control. This paper presents a standardised serpentine sample geometry, test fixture, and measurement procedure to reliably determine the electrical conductivity and temperature coefficient of resistivity. The procedure is based on an existing standard while the sample geometry, test fixture and suggested apparatus are designed to be simple and accessible to encourage adoption across disciplines along the Additive Manufacturing production chain and end-application.