Additive Manufacturing of Wood Flour/PHA Composites Using Micro-Screw Extrusion: Effect of Device and Process Parameters on Performance.

Jing Tian,Weimin Chou,Ping Xue,Jiayuan Yang,Yun Ding,Run Zhang

doi:10.3390/polym13071107

Abstract

Based on additive manufacturing of wood flour and polyhydroxyalkanoates composites using micro-screw extrusion, device and process parameters were evaluated to achieve a reliable printing. The results show that the anisotropy of samples printed by micro-screw extrusion is less obvious than that of filament extrusion fused deposition modeling. The type of micro-screw, printing speed, layer thickness, and nozzle diameter have significant effects on the performance of printed samples. The linear relationship between the influencing parameters and the screw speed is established, therefore, the performance of printed products can be controlled by the extrusion flow rate related to screw speed.

Highlights

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely used in engineering and industry fields in recent years owing to processing of complex parts and customization, such as aircraft, dental restorations, medical implants, and automotive products [1,2,3]
The anisotropy of micro-screw extrusion fused deposition modeling (FDM) was not as obvious as that of filament extrusion, which reflected in raster angle; The printing speed is the most significant factor for micro-screw extrusion AM, followed by the layer thickness
The printing speed and layer thickness should be primarily considered in the printing parameters of micro-screw extrusion

Summary

Introduction

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely used in engineering and industry fields in recent years owing to processing of complex parts and customization, such as aircraft, dental restorations, medical implants, and automotive products [1,2,3]. Among many kinds of AM technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology is still expanding the types of materials owing to flexibility in design and low cost, and a lot of research has been done on FDM technology. Previous study has proposed to use micro-screw extrusion AM to resolve the discontinuous feeding and nozzle clogging of wood flour/polyhydroxyalkanoates (WF/PHA) composites without additives, and AM of WF/PHA composites has been preliminary studied [5]. The forming process of filament extrusion FDM has been extensively studied [6,7,8,9], few systematic studies concerning the micro-screw extrusion

Methods

Results

Conclusion