Enhanced tensile strength of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene composite specimens fabricated by overheat fused filament fabrication printing

Abstract

In this study, we apply a simple but effective method to enhance tensile strength of carbon fiber (CF)/acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and glass fiber (GF)/ABS specimens via fused filament fabrication (FFF). By employing a significant high printing temperature while turning off the cooling fan, the extruded ABS composite melt could be overheated, resulting in better diffusion process between composite rasters with reduced cooling rate and prolonged diffusion time . Consequently, the printed ABS composite specimens could achieve a porosity as low as 3.65%, corresponding to a decrease of up to 60% compared to those printed by a normal printing process. More importantly, the weld lengths formed between the adjacent rasters of the printed composite specimens increased by up to 122%, indicating a considerable enhancement in the raster interfacial bonding . Furthermore, the overheat printed composite specimens exhibited an increase of up to 20% in maximum bearing load, tensile strength, and Young's modulus compared to their normal printed counterparts. This work demonstrates that the overheat FFF printing has great potential to fabricate ABS composite specimens with enhanced structure and mechanical performance for end-use structural applications. • Facile but effective method proposed to fabricate dense and high-performance FFF printed ABS composite parts. • Comprehensive study of process-structure-property correlation. • Overheat printing reduces porosity of printed ABS composite parts by up to 60%. • Overheat printing increases maximum bearing load, tensile strength, and Young's modulus of printed ABS composite parts by up to 20%, respectively.