Wood Warping Composite by 3D Printing

Abstract

Wood warping is a phenomenon known as a deformation in wood that occurs when changes in moisture content cause an unevenly volumetric change due to fiber orientation. Here we present an investigation of wood warped objects that were fabricated by 3D printing. Similar to natural wood warping, water evaporation causes volume decrease of the printed object, but in contrast, the printing pathway pattern and flow rate dictate the direction of the alignment and its intensity, all of which can be predesigned and affect the resulting structure after drying. The fabrication of the objects was performed by an extrusion-based 3D printing technique that enables the deposition of water-based inks into 3D objects. The printing ink was composed of 100% wood-based materials, wood flour, and plant-extracted natural binders cellulose nanocrystals, and xyloglucan, without the need for any additional synthetic resins. Two archetypal structures were printed: cylindrical structure and helices. In the former, we identified a new length scale that gauges the effect of gravity on the shape. In the latter, the structure exhibited a shape transition analogous to the opening of a seedpod, quantitatively reproducing theoretical predictions. Together, by carefully tuning the flow rate and printing pathway, the morphology of the fully dried wooden objects can be controlled. Hence, it is possible to design the printing of wet objects that will form different final 3D structures.

Bio-Mimicry: Tree rings and three-dimensional printing – Preliminary biomimetic experiments with fused deposition modeling using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene filament

“…The dimension of the base unit cells was around 70x65x60 mm in the Z, X, and Y directions, respectively, and the cell size was significantly higher than in this study. Kam et al (2022) concluded that structures (3D wood warped seedpod) can be successful AM by deposition of 1 mm thick layers using water-based inks in the 3D printing application. In this study, successful printing was not achieved for annual ring formation, but success can be obtained by printing models with larger ring diameters, as in previous studies.…”

“…Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging way for printing biomimetic structures. There have been many studies focused on bio-mimicry of wood or wood-related issues, including biomimetics of living wood using AM (Thibaut 2019); wood tissue printing (Markstedt et al 2019); powder-based 3D-printing by binder jetting (BJ) of dry-wood termite frass to bio-mimic the biodegraded wood (Plarre et al 2021); 3D-printed wood warped seedpod by wooden ink with polydisperse wood powder (Kam et al 2022); mechanical properties of printed (stereolithography) composite composed of poplar wood flour modified with methacrylate-based resin (Zhang et al 2021); review data for polylactic acid (PLA) filament modified with plant-sourced materials (Bhagia et al 2021); plant-derived materials used in 3D printing (Sharma et al 2021); biomass-derived 3D printing materials (Ji et al 2020); robotic arms for cellulose-based filament deposition (Iyer and Hasenson 2019); and lignin types and manners of printing of lignin using AM (Ebers et al 2021).…”

Lignin‐Based Materials for Additive Manufacturing: Chemistry, Processing, Structures, Properties, and Applications

“…Reproduced with permission. [ 266 ] Copyright 2022, MDPI. c) Schematic and images of the multimaterial extrusion‐based DIW printing of a mashrabiya, a chess board model, a nut, screw, and the cross‐section SEM of printed material.…”

“…Such objects can also be fabricated by 3D printing. Kam et al [266] developed a printable ink composed of 100% wood-based materials (Figure 16a, wood flour, CNC, and xyloglucan). By carefully controlling the flow rate and printing path, the morphology of the fully dried wooden objects can be tuned from plate to annulus due to the anisotropic shrinkages (Figure 16b), which opens an avenue toward the 4D printing of wood.…”

“…b)The 3D warped objects at different velocities and the dimensionless radius or pitch versus dimensionless width. Reproduced with permission [266]. Copyright 2022, MDPI.…”