Controlling Material Properties using 3D Printer Parameters

Dawson Eckhardt Author

04/10/2021 Added

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The purpose of this research was to elucidate ways to control the final material properties of objects manufactured using fused deposition modelling. This study focused on widely used filament—polylactic acid (PLA). This study utilized a wide, but carefully selected, range of printing materials and processing parameters, which will allow drawing conclusions about how the impact that different printing variables have on ultimate material properties of a 3D printed object.

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[00:00:00.773]Hi, I am Dawson Eckhardt,
[00:00:02.060]and my project is, "Controlling material properties
[00:00:04.397]"using 3D printer parameters."
[00:00:06.710]And my sponsor is Doctor Ballester.
[00:00:11.810]Back up for this project, 3D printing is a widely used
[00:00:15.190]process becoming more and more popular, yet there's little
[00:00:18.320]information published or known about how print settings
[00:00:21.750]influence the outcome of material properties
[00:00:24.130]of 3D printed samples.
[00:00:26.980]The most common type of 3D printing
[00:00:28.470]is fused deposition modeling or FDM, and most printing code
[00:00:33.340]for these printers is generated using a variety of different
[00:00:36.580]slicing software, there is no universal software
[00:00:39.650]for all printers.
[00:00:41.581]The objective of most slicing software
[00:00:43.790]is fastest print speed without print failure,
[00:00:46.470]there is no focus on material properties
[00:00:49.031]of the finished printing parts.
[00:00:53.570]So the objective of this research is to find ways to control
[00:00:56.490]the final material properties of objects
[00:00:58.990]manufactured using FDM.
[00:01:01.920]This study will focus on a widely use filament,
[00:01:04.400]PLA or polylactic acid.
[00:01:08.380]And we will utilize a wide range of printing parameters
[00:01:13.287]to draw conclusions about the impact
[00:01:15.560]of different printing variables and their effect
[00:01:19.130]on the ultimate material properties of 3D printed objects.
[00:01:25.070]Methods of this research will be printing different samples
[00:01:30.160]of the PLA at various parameters
[00:01:32.120]as using a Hyrel FDM printer.
[00:01:34.470]We will vary nozzle temperature, bed temperature,
[00:01:37.660]print speed, layer height, and the extrusion multiplier.
[00:01:42.460]Printed samples will then be inspected
[00:01:45.170]through an optical microscope, and these samples
[00:01:48.870]will also have mechanical testing done using
[00:01:52.620]an Instron machine to determine their material properties.
[00:01:59.170]Results for this research.
[00:02:00.350]So first of all, there is very obvious visual results.
[00:02:08.177]Certain parameters result in very good prints
[00:02:10.600]as seen in the first picture, and then some variation
[00:02:15.170]of programeters result in very poor prints,
[00:02:17.700]like the bottom four pictures.
[00:02:20.260]Poor prints can be the result of warping
[00:02:24.760]because of extreme temperatures or poor layer adhesions
[00:02:29.240]because of large layer height, or very high printing speeds,
[00:02:33.900]and all of these are undesirable qualities
[00:02:36.470]of finished parts.
[00:02:42.570]Microscope results of this research.
[00:02:46.140]So the best visual prints appeared to have
[00:02:49.960]the best layer structure.
[00:02:55.220]The layer structure is defined by having
[00:02:58.300]the most contact length between layers,
[00:03:00.960]and then the best vertical alignment of layers.
[00:03:05.460]So as you can see in these pictures the good prints
[00:03:08.240]result in good layer structure.
[00:03:11.160]Each layer is one of these elliptical looking beads,
[00:03:18.710]so the contact length between layers
[00:03:22.040]would be this blue line, so having a larger contact length
[00:03:25.900]means you have a better connection between layers,
[00:03:28.600]and this is usually a result of vertical alignment,
[00:03:31.010]how well the layers are stacked upon each other.
[00:03:36.430]As we can see for the bad print, bad visual print quality
[00:03:39.650]often resulted in bad layer structure, this is due to,
[00:03:46.840]there is very poor vertical alignment between the layers,
[00:03:52.030]that results in very little contact length between layers.
[00:03:58.290]The conclusion of this research
[00:03:59.540]was that there was a correlation between
[00:04:02.600]visual print quality and layer structure,
[00:04:06.710]and that the best printing parameters for PLA FDM printing
[00:04:11.460]was a nozzle temperature 205 degrees Celsius,
[00:04:14.440]a bed temperature of 55 degrees Celsius,
[00:04:17.060]and a print speed of 15 millimeters per second,
[00:04:19.810]and a layer height of 0.3 millimeters,
[00:04:21.830]and an extrusion multiplier of 1.3.
[00:04:24.790]Extreme variations of most parameters
[00:04:26.830]cause a massive print failure.
[00:04:32.590]Future work for this research, we still need to conclude
[00:04:35.460]Instron testing of printed samples and draw a correlation
[00:04:38.750]between layer structure and mechanical properties.
[00:04:41.750]And then we hope to study other widely used materials
[00:04:44.650]like ABS or polypropylene, and then some uncommon
[00:04:48.400]material like nylon.
[00:04:51.920]I'd like to thank Doctor Ballester for being my sponsor
[00:04:54.190]on this project, and I would like to thank Doctor Rao
[00:04:56.550]for allowing us to use Hyrel printer,
[00:04:59.160]and then I would like to thank UCare
[00:05:00.760]for funding this project.

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Controlling Material Properties using 3D Printer Parameters

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