The study of screw extrusion-based additive manufacturing of eco-friendly aliphatic polyketone

Abstract

Aliphatic polyketone is a new-age eco-friendly, high-performance engineering thermoplastic. However, its potential for replacing other polymers depends on its ability to be processed. Considering that the first aliphatic polyketone suitable for processing was developed relatively recently (2015), the material gained new research potential. In this paper screw extrusion-based process was developed for additive manufacturing of aliphatic polyketone. A detailed characterisation of the process and printed samples was done. It was shown that the extruder-base process can produce stable additive-manufactured parts depending on printing speed (process parameters). The interpass temperature has a significant influence on printing properties and it depends on printing speed (travel speed of building platform and extruder rotational speed). With the increase in the printing speed, the interpass temperature increases as well. If it is low causes insufficient heat for diffusion to occur causing delamination and if it is too high causes geometrical deviation of workpieces which leads to defects causing a reduction in inter-road strength. The tensile strength of specimens with raster angle 0° was 62.7 ± 1.4 MPa, which is slightly higher than the tensile strength of base material guaranteed by the supplier (60 MPa) while the elongation up to the first crack was 32.8 ± 4.6%. Iinter-road strength in specimens with a raster angle of 90° was 37.2 ± 0.8 MPa which is 62% of the base material while interpass temperature was 189 ± 3.3 °C.