Systematical mechanism of Polyamide-12 aging and its micro-structural evolution during laser sintering

Abstract

Laser sintering (LS) has capability of manufacturing complex structures and functional parts. However, material aging and part performance stability are still challenges to face in LS irrespective of protective atmosphere. Consequently, this work focuses on the essence of these problems and investigations on systematical mechanism of PA-12 aging and its micro-structural evolution during LS. The results show that the mechanism mainly has two opposite aspects concerning the material processability. On one hand, analogous Brill transition of peak merging, which is discovered for the first time in the powder aging process of LS PA-12 material, leads to a higher oneset melting temperature of the aged powder and broadens the sintering window more than 1 °C after 3 recycling. On the other, the existence of solid-state and melt-state polycondensation, which is proved by XPS and rheological measurements, induces the higher temperature nucleation for the aged powder and the crystallization postponement for aged LS parts detected in DSC. The effect of solid-state polycondensation reduces the crystallinity of the powder by ∼6% after 3 recycling. This mechanism is of the guiding significance for powder stability improvement and consistent control of component properties next.