Appraisal of Mechanical and Tribological Properties on PA6-TiO2 Composites through Fused Deposition Modelling

Abstract

The primary objective of this examination is to build an arrangement of new polyamide blends with inventive properties like biodegradability. The composite blends of polyamide 6 (PA6) blended with 10, 20 and 30 wt.% titanium-di-oxide (TiO2) were taken for this proposed work and converted in a form of wire in a filament extruder machine and taken to build the parts by using Fused deposition modelling (FDM) machine. Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing technology commonly used for modelling, prototyping, and production applications. This process constructs three-dimensional objects directly from 3D CAD data. A temperature-controlled head extrudes thermoplastic material layer by layer. The quality and strength of part that is built depends on many variables in FDM process. In this study important process parameters of extrusion were fixed. Test specimens were prepared by melting, compounding and smoothly printed by means of a commercial FDM three-dimensional (3D) printer. The printed samples were taken for mechanical and tribological test. The tested sample’s outcome from UTM indicates that incorporation of filler stacking with equally distributed particles and higher weight (30) percentage of TiO2 has influenced in higher mechanical properties of virgin PA6 and lower weight (10 and 20) percentage of TiO2 gives moderate mechanical properties of the same. These tribological tests were carried out on the pin on disk tribometer under varying load conditions such as 5, 10, 15 and 20 N at sliding speed of 1.256 m/s for the run time of 5 and 10 minutes. The results showed that the minimum wear rate of PA6-30%TiO2 samples at maximum applied load of 20N and run time of 10 minutes conditions. The results obtained are exceptionally promising which concludes the methodology exhibited in this paper has applications for design and manufacture of automotive parts utilizing FDM technology.