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Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication

It is widely known that the printing quality of fused filament fabrication (FFF) is heavily affected by environmental temperature and humidity, taking the form of warping and porosity. However, there is little understanding about the quantitative relations between environmental conditions, geometry,...

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Autores principales: Fang, Lichen, Yan, Yishu, Agarwal, Ojaswi, Yao, Shengyu, Seppala, Jonathan E., Kang, Sung Hoon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7579282/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33022988
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma13194414
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author Fang, Lichen
Yan, Yishu
Agarwal, Ojaswi
Yao, Shengyu
Seppala, Jonathan E.
Kang, Sung Hoon
author_facet Fang, Lichen
Yan, Yishu
Agarwal, Ojaswi
Yao, Shengyu
Seppala, Jonathan E.
Kang, Sung Hoon
author_sort Fang, Lichen
collection PubMed
description It is widely known that the printing quality of fused filament fabrication (FFF) is heavily affected by environmental temperature and humidity, taking the form of warping and porosity. However, there is little understanding about the quantitative relations between environmental conditions, geometry, and the mechanical properties of printed parts. In this study, we systematically investigated those relations using bisphenol A polycarbonate as a model material system. For the environmental temperature, an in-situ infrared imaging analysis revealed the presence of an up to 5.4 °C/mm thermal gradient when printing using an open-chamber printer and a heated build plate. For the environmental humidity, an analysis of X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scans showed an up to 11.7% porosity that was brought by polymer water content absorbed from environmental moisture. Meanwhile, tensile tests showed a mechanical performance loss associated with those defects, but, surprisingly, the transverse direction ductility had the potential to increase at a higher porosity. Furthermore, the experimental results were combined with analytical and parametrical studies to elucidate quantitative relations between environmental conditions and printing quality. Based on the results, quantitative guidelines for the estimation of printing quality based on environmental conditions are provided that would also help users to obtain desired printing results with a better understanding of the effects of environmental conditions.
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spelling pubmed-75792822020-10-29 Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication Fang, Lichen Yan, Yishu Agarwal, Ojaswi Yao, Shengyu Seppala, Jonathan E. Kang, Sung Hoon Materials (Basel) Article It is widely known that the printing quality of fused filament fabrication (FFF) is heavily affected by environmental temperature and humidity, taking the form of warping and porosity. However, there is little understanding about the quantitative relations between environmental conditions, geometry, and the mechanical properties of printed parts. In this study, we systematically investigated those relations using bisphenol A polycarbonate as a model material system. For the environmental temperature, an in-situ infrared imaging analysis revealed the presence of an up to 5.4 °C/mm thermal gradient when printing using an open-chamber printer and a heated build plate. For the environmental humidity, an analysis of X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scans showed an up to 11.7% porosity that was brought by polymer water content absorbed from environmental moisture. Meanwhile, tensile tests showed a mechanical performance loss associated with those defects, but, surprisingly, the transverse direction ductility had the potential to increase at a higher porosity. Furthermore, the experimental results were combined with analytical and parametrical studies to elucidate quantitative relations between environmental conditions and printing quality. Based on the results, quantitative guidelines for the estimation of printing quality based on environmental conditions are provided that would also help users to obtain desired printing results with a better understanding of the effects of environmental conditions. MDPI 2020-10-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7579282/ /pubmed/33022988 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma13194414 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Fang, Lichen
Yan, Yishu
Agarwal, Ojaswi
Yao, Shengyu
Seppala, Jonathan E.
Kang, Sung Hoon
Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication
title Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication
title_full Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication
title_fullStr Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication
title_full_unstemmed Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication
title_short Effects of Environmental Temperature and Humidity on the Geometry and Strength of Polycarbonate Specimens Prepared by Fused Filament Fabrication
title_sort effects of environmental temperature and humidity on the geometry and strength of polycarbonate specimens prepared by fused filament fabrication
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7579282/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33022988
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma13194414
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