On wear of 3D printed Al2O3 reinforced Nylon6 matrix based functional prototypes

Abstract

The use of fused deposition modelling (FDM) based functional prototypes for wear resistance applications is presently limited mainly because of selective material availability of filament materials. Various research groups have reinforced several fillers in thermoplastic base to prepare feedstock filaments to improve the mechanical properties and to address the reusability issue of polymeric waste. But hitherto the effect of Al2O3 particle sizes (as single, dual and triple particle size as reinforcement) in Nylon6 thermoplastic blend has been less explored. In the present investigation an effort has been made to prepare feed stock filament for 3D printing application to explore its wear resistant properties. The current investigation suggested that dual particle size reinforced pin exhibit better wear properties followed by triple and single particle reinforced pins. The wear tracks obtained in this study shows that dual particle size based composite material is highly wear resistant as compared to virgin acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)/ Nylon6. The results have been supported by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of prepared pins for wear testing.