Abstract
Three-dimensional (3D) printing has been successfully applied for the fabrication of polymer components ranging from prototypes to final products. An issue, however, is that the resulting 3D printed parts exhibit inferior mechanical performance to parts fabricated using conventional polymer processing technologies, such as compression moulding. The addition of fibres and other materials into the polymer matrix to form a composite can yield a significant enhancement in the structural strength of printed polymer parts. This review focuses on the enhanced mechanical performance obtained through the printing of fibre-reinforced polymer composites, using the fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing technique. The uses of both short and continuous fibre-reinforced polymer composites are reviewed. Finally, examples of some applications of FFF printed polymer composites using robotic processes are highlighted.
Highlights
Three-dimensional (3D) printing, known as additive manufacturing (AM), can be used to print a range of metallic, polymer and composite parts with complex geometries and great design flexibility, while minimising processing waste [1,2]
This study demonstrated that the best performing fused filament fabrication (FFF) printed parts were obtained for samples reinforced with 5 wt % carbon fibre, which achieved 22.5% and 30.5% increases in tensile strength and Young’s modulus, respectively, compared with the acrylonitrile butadienebutadiene styrene (ABS) only specimens
The results showed that FFF 3D printing yielded samples with very high fibre orientation, lower average fibre length and high porosity levels (16–27%) compared with those obtained using the compression moulded (CM) process
Summary
Three-dimensional (3D) printing, known as additive manufacturing (AM), can be used to print a range of metallic, polymer and composite parts with complex geometries and great design flexibility, while minimising processing waste [1,2]. Applications of this processing technology have included parts fabricated for use in the biomedical, automotive and aerospace sectors [3]. A range of other polymer 3D printing technologies are available, including Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Laminated Object Modelling (LOM), Multi Jet Fusion Printing and Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) processes [6,7,8] The latter technique, which is known by the trade name Fused Deposition.
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