Strategy To Improve Printability of Renewable Resource-Based Engineering Plastic Tailored for FDM Applications

Abstract

This work features the first-time use of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT), a biobased engineering thermoplastic, for fused deposition modeling (FDM) applications. Additives such as chain extenders (CEs) and impact modifiers are traditionally used to improve the processability of polymers for injection molding; as a proof of concept for their use in FDM, the same strategies were applied to PTT to improve its printability. The filament processing conditions and printing parameters were optimized to generate complete, warpage-free samples. The blends were characterized through physical, thermal, viscoelastic, and morphological analyses. In the optimal blend (90 wt % PTT, 10 wt % impact modifier, and 0.5 phr CE), the filament diameter was improved by ∼150%, the size of the spherulites significantly decreased to 5% of the ∼26 μm spherulite size found in neat PTT, and the melt flow index decreased to ∼4.7 g/10 min. From this blend, FDM samples with a high impact performance of ∼61 J/m were obtained, which are comparable to other conventional FDM thermoplastics. The ability to print complete and warpage-free samples from this blend suggests a new filament feedstock material for industrial and home-use FDM applications. This paper discusses methods to improve hard-to-print polymers and presents the improved printability of PTT as proof of these methods’ effectiveness.

Properties of 3D Printable Poly(lactic acid)/Poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) Blends and Nano Talc Composites

“…Nano Talc Composites. Rheological properties of the blends and the composites are carried out for 3D printing technology in order to determine the printability, dimension stability, and interlayer adhesion in the 3D printing process [7,18,27]. Figure 4 illustrates complex viscosity (η * ), storage modulus (G ′ ), and loss modulus (G ″ ) from viscoelastic behaviour of the PLA/PBAT blends and the 70/30-nano talc composites.…”

“…Cicala et al reported that low viscosity and elasticity of material resulted in flow and dripping of layer deposition that was fallen as poor printing quality [14]. On the contrary, polymers with high viscosities are difficult in printing and lead to inconsistent flow from the nozzle [7]. Qahtani et al found that their printing job failed due to high viscosity and dimensional instability [6].…”

“…3D printing technology has been popular for rapid prototyping technology, which is flexible design by computer-aided design software without molds [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Up to date, the development in 3D printing technology in various applications is further required such as small parts or pseudo organs in the medical industry, new fashion clothes in the textile industry, and automotive and construction parts [2-4, 10, 11].…”

“…Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is widely used for polymer materials in the 3D printing technology [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Structural fabricated in FDM 3D printing is operated by extruding molten thermoplastic filament layer-by-layer deposition [5][6][7][8][9][12][13][14][15][16]. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of 3D printing technology deal with low mechanical properties, long processing time, conflicting mass-production scale, poor dimensional stability due to thermal-induced volume shrinkage, and heat distortion of materials [2,3].…”

Printability, Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Poly(3-Hydroxybutyrate)-Poly(Lactic Acid)-Plasticizer Blends for Three-Dimensional (3D) Printing

“…Papers dealing with the printability of PLA or PHB or different biobased polymer are even rarer. Diederichs et al [ 40 ] investigated how to improve the printability of biobased poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT) with additives such as chain extenders (CEs) and impact modifiers. They were able to prepare 3D printed complete and warpage-free samples because of the modifications made in processing and printing parameters, and with the assistance of additives.…”