Investigation into the selective laser sintering of styrene–acrylonitrile copolymer and postprocessing

Abstract

The amorphous polymer of polystyrene (PS) has been widely used in the selective laser sintering (SLS) process. However, PS is not suitable to make parts with thin-wall or delicate structures because of the poor mechanical properties of its SLS parts. Therefore, styrene–acrylonitrile copolymer (SAN), another kind of amorphous polymers, was investigated as an SLS material. The effects of laser energy density on the relative density, mechanical properties, and dimensional accuracy of the SLS parts were studied, and the properties of PS and SAN SLS parts were compared. The postprocessing method of infiltrating with epoxy resin was used to reinforce the green SAN SLS parts. The results show that there is little difference in the relative density between the SAN and PS SLS parts, while the flexural strength of the SAN SLS specimens is obviously higher than that of the PS SLS specimens at the same energy density. After the postprocessing, the flexural strength, flexural modulus, and impact strength of the SAN SLS specimens increase by 133%, 4394%, and 254%, respectively, and the SLS parts maintain relatively high-dimensional accuracy although slight shrinkage occurs due to epoxy resin cure. SAN can be used to fabricate SLS parts with more complex and delicate structures.