On the Feasibility of Printing 3D Composite Objects Based on Polypropylene/Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes

Nicoleta-Violeta Stanciu,Felicia Stan,Florin Susac,Catalin Fetecau,I. Bondrea,M. Inţă,N.F. Cofaru

doi:10.1051/matecconf/201929003017

Nicoleta-Violeta Stanciu, Felicia Stan + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201929003017

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Abstract

In this paper, the feasibility of 3D printing polypropylene/ multi-walled carbon nanotube (PP/MWCNT) composites by fused deposition modeling. First, the rheological behavior of PP with 0.3, 0.5 and 1 wt.% of MWCNT was investigated in order to determine the printability in terms of melt shear viscosity and flow activation energy. Second, the filament extrusion process was optimized by the trial-and-error method in order to obtain round and constant filaments. Finally, tensile specimens were printed and tested in order to determine the mechanical properties at various printing direction. Experimental results show that the PP/MWCNT composite filaments with MWCNT loading up to 1 wt.% have good printability characteristics and can be successfully 3D printed with good mechanical performance.

Highlights

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing (AM) process that uses thermoplastic filament by fused deposition which creates part geometry along trajectories generated by slicing [1]
A linear relationship was used to estimate the dependence of the melt shear viscosity on the multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) wt.%
Both the slope and the intercept of the straight line decrease with increasing shear rate (Table 2), indicating that the sensitivity of PP/MWCNT composites is weakened with increasing apparent shear rate [38]

Summary

Introduction

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing (AM) process that uses thermoplastic filament by fused deposition which creates part geometry along trajectories generated by slicing [1]. This manufacturing process provides the ability to fabricate prototypes in the early stages of designing, but the part is made from triangles and not true arcs, splines etc. Scientific literature results provide extensive information on both mechanical and electrical properties of PP/CNT composites [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33] as well as on the rheological properties [21,24,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36], mostly at low shear rates; the filament extrudability and 3D printability of PP/MWCNT composites were not investigated

Methods

Results

Conclusion