Additive metal manufacturing process

An additive metal manufacturing process for producing a fully dense monolithic three dimensional metal part comprising the following steps:

• compounding metal powder and a thermoplastic polymer to form a metal powder filled plastic composite that is heated, mechanically shaped, and then cooled to produce thermoplastic composite sheets of one or more different thicknesses;
• cutting and/or heating and deforming the thermoplastic composite sheets to produce green trim scrap and one or more thermoplastic metal powder composite geometric shapes that singly or in combination have at least a portion of the three dimensional shape of the monolithic metal part, wherein contact adhesive is applied to one or more of the thermoplastic metal powder composite geometric shapes such that the contact adhesive forms temporary bonds with a pick and place mechanism platen to move the geometric shapes to placement in a three dimensional part assembly and optionally bonding together of the geometric shapes comprising the three dimensional part assembly;
• optionally adding one or more additional thermoplastic metal powder composite geometric shapes produced by three dimensional printing to the three dimensional part, wherein contact adhesive is optionally used to secure the additional geometric shapes to the three dimensional part assembly;
• and
• sintering the thermoplastic metal powder composite three dimensional part assembly to form a monolithic metal part and recycling the green trim scrap to the compounding step such that the scrap is utilized in the production of additional metal powder filled plastic composite to produce additional thermoplastic composite sheets;
• wherein the pick and place mechanism platen is segmented to vary the effective platen size and shape to match variations in the size and shape of the thermoplastic metal powder composite geometric shapes.