Abstract
Herein, we report the melt blending of amorphous poly(lactide acid) (PLA) with poly(styrene-co-methyl methacrylate) (poly(S-co-MMA)). The PLAx/poly(S-co-MMA)y blends were made using amorphous PLA compositions from 50, 75, and 90wt.%, namely PLA50/poly(S-co-MMA)50, PLA75/poly(S-co-MMA)25, and PLA90/poly(S-co-MMA)10, respectively. The PLAx/poly(S-co-MMA)y blend pellets were extruded into filaments through a prototype extruder at 195 °C. The 3D printing was done via fused deposition modeling (FDM) at the same temperature and a 40 mm/s feed rate. Furthermore, thermogravimetric curves of the PLAx/poly(S-co-MMA)y blends showed slight thermal decomposition with less than 0.2% mass loss during filament extrusion and 3D printing. However, the thermal decomposition of the blends is lower when compared to amorphous PLA and poly(S-co-MMA). On the contrary, the PLAx/poly(S-co-MMA)y blend has a higher Young’s modulus (E) than amorphous PLA, and is closer to poly(S-co-MMA), in particular, PLA90/poly(S-co-MMA)10. The PLAx/poly(S-co-MMA)y blends proved improved properties concerning amorphous PLA through mechanical and rheological characterization.
Highlights
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing makes it possible to produce exceptional architecture with different complexity grades [1,2].additive manufacturing has several advantages, such as formability, variability, practicability, mass delivery, and surface property designs [3]
We reported the processing conditions for filament extrusion and additive manufacturing for PLAx /poly(S-co-MMA)y blends, as well as their mechanical, thermal, and rheological properties
Poly(S-co-MMA) used in this research is a commercial material with random copolymer architecture
Summary
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing makes it possible to produce exceptional architecture with different complexity grades [1,2].additive manufacturing has several advantages, such as formability, variability, practicability, mass delivery, and surface property designs [3]. The FDM limitations are the high-temperature manufacturing of polymeric filaments prior to 3D printing, exclusivity for thermoplastic polymers, and the lack of polymeric filaments available at the industrial level with mechanical properties suitable for 3D printing [1,6]. Mirón et al [8] produced uniform filaments extruded with a nozzle diameter of 2.85 mm and a temperature range from 175 to 180 ◦ C for semi-crystalline PLA. The additive manufacturing applications cover diverse areas, biomedical fields such as scaffolds [10,11,12,13], drug delivery systems [14], surgical tools, and implantable devices [15,16], among others
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