This work presents a comprehensive investigation into the optimization of critical process parameters associated with metal fused filament fabrication (Metal-FFF) for the production of copper-based components. The study focused on three different commercial and one self-manufactured filament, each with unique chemical compositions. These filaments were systematically optimized and the density was characterized for all processing steps, as well as the electrical conductivity on the specimen scale. Remarkably, two of the studied filaments exhibited exceptional properties after sintering with forming gas (up to 94% density and $55.75$ M$\mathrm{S}$/$\mathrm{m}$ electrical conductivity), approaching the properties measured for established manufacturing methods like metal injection molding. Finally, the research was extended to component-scale applications, demonstrating the successful fabrication of inductors with integrated cooling channels. These components exhibited water tightness and were used in induction hardening experiments, validating the practical utility of the optimized Metal-FFF process. In summary, the results show great promise in advancing the utilization of Metal-FFF in industrial contexts, particularly in the production of high-performance copper components.

In the laser powder bed fusion process (PBF-LB), components are built up incrementally by locally melting metal powder with a laser beam. This process leads to inhomogeneous material properties of the manufactured components. By integrating these specific material properties into a topology optimization algorithm, product developers can be supported in the early phases of the product development process, such as design finding. For this purpose, a topology optimization method was developed, which takes the inhomogeneous material properties of components fabricated in the PBF-LB process into account. The complex pore architecture in PBF-LB components was studied with micro-computed tomography (µCT). Thereby, three characteristic regions of different porosity were identified and analyzed. The effective stiffness in each of these regions was determined by means of resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy (RUS) as well as finite element analysis. Afterward, the effective stiffness is iteratively considered in the developed topology optimization method. The resulting design proposals of two optimization cases were analyzed and compared to design proposals derived from a standard topology optimization. To evaluate the developed topology optimization method, the derived design proposals were additionally manufactured in the PBF-LB process, and the characteristic pore architecture was analyzed by means of µCT.