Abstract
Screen-additive manufacturing (SAM) is a potential method for producing small intricate parts without waste generation, offering minimal production cost. A wide range of materials, including gels, can be shaped using this method. A gel material is composed of a three-dimensional cross-linked polymer or colloidal network immersed in a fluid, known as hydrogel when its main constituent fluid is water. Hydrogels are capable of absorbing and retaining large amounts of water. Cellulose gel is among the materials that can form hydrogels and, as shown in this work, has the required properties to be directly SAM, including shear thinning and formation of post-shearing gel structure. In this study, we present the developed method of SAM for the fabrication of complex-shaped cellulose gel and examine whether successive printing layers can be completed without delamination. In addition, we evaluated cellulose SAM without the need for support material. Design of Experiments (DoE) was applied to optimize the SAM settings for printing the novel cellulose-based gel structure. The optimum print settings were then used to print a periodic structure with micro features and without the need for support material.
Highlights
In recent years, various approaches based on additive manufacturing (AM), popularly known as 3D printing, of natural materials or biopolymers have been explored to fabricate complex geometries of gels [1,2,3,4]
We present the printability of cellulose gel using the developed Screen-Additive Manufacturing (SAM) process to create three-dimensional objects and determine the print parameters of screen-printing hydrogels using a Design of Experiments (DoE) process
The measured data were subjected to the Minitab statistical software package to predict the nearly cubic shape cellulose gel part at proposed optimum SAM settings
Summary
Various approaches based on additive manufacturing (AM), popularly known as 3D printing, of natural materials or biopolymers have been explored to fabricate complex geometries of gels [1,2,3,4]. Acknowledging cellulose gel fabrication limitations, we developed a method called screen-additive manufacturing (SAM), or 3D screen-printing, to address the obstacles in shaping hydrogels [6]. We examined how the cellulose gel could be shaped using the developed process In this method, a computer model of a part was sliced into layers and each layer was used to fabricate a screen. We present the printability of cellulose gel using the developed SAM process to create three-dimensional objects and determine the print parameters of screen-printing hydrogels using a Design of Experiments (DoE) process. An experimental design that selects only a limited number of data points is called a partial factorial design This shortcut method is well known, there are no general guidelines for its application and no analytical method is available for analyzing the results. A study of the effect of an individual parameter can indicate which parameters have the greatest influence on the performance measure
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