Hybrid fused filament fabrication for manufacturing of Al microfilm reinforced PLA structures

Abstract

The quality of 3D printed thermoplastic structures mainly depends upon the various aspects of deposition pattern, processing conditions, and layer bonding. The incomplete layer-to-layer adhesion during the additive manufacturing process is the most critical issue since thermoplastics are bad heat conductors. In this study, aluminum (Al) microfilms have been deposited to promote the adhesion between the additive layers. The composite structures (as per ASTM D 695) of polylactic acid thermoplastic were manufactured by fused filament fabrication (FFF) process and consecutively reinforced with Al spray. The composite structures were subjected to compressive loading to investigate the influence of input process variables like; in-between microfilm layers (1–5 layers), bed temperature (60–100 °C), and infill percentage (40–100%). The results of the study suggested that using microfilm in-between additive layers is a promising technique for improving the compressive properties. The compressive strength has been observed maximum by performing FFF with 3 layers of Al microfilm, 70% of infill percentage, and 100 °C bed temperature. The results are supported by scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, and differential scanning calorimeter analysis. An optimization study was successfully conducted using the analytic hierarchy process, which predicted the optimum parameter settings based on the relative importance of each response variable.