Printing polymer blends through in situ active mixing during fused filament fabrication

Kennedy, Zachary C.; Christ, Josef F.

doi:10.1016/j.addma.2020.101233

Printing polymer blends through in situ active mixing during fused filament fabrication

Journal Article · Fri May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Additive Manufacturing

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2020.101233· OSTI ID:1658585

^[1]; Christ, Josef F. ^[1]

Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Fused filament fabrication (FFF) enables production of 3D objects over a range of material compositions at low-cost relative to traditional manufacturing approaches. To date, a limited but growing number of materials are able to be used with FFF, however many applications exist where specific mechanical, thermal, or chemical properties are needed that cannot currently be met with the available feedstock selection. Therefore, a need exists to tune these materials for specific chemical or mechanical properties. One common formulation strategy to address these demanding design parameters is to develop composites or polymer blend filaments. Typically, this is a time-consuming and costly optimization process. Here, we have developed hardware for reproducibly mixing two filaments of similar or dissimilar compositions at the time of printing within individual printed layers. This mixing occurs via software-controlled rotating hardware in the chamber of an extruder’s hot-end. The efficiency of mixing within the printed layers has been characterized in detail as a function of the rotational speed and geometry of the blending hardware. These parameters were exploited to program the ratio and distribution of thermoplastic-based filaments blended within printed extrudate. Example printed specimens were produced with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) elastomer blended with rigid polylactic acid (PLA) and Nylon blended with PLA. In addition, a conductive carbon nanotube (CNT)-PLA composite was blended as a function of mixer geometry and input feed ratios with non-conductive PLA and resistance values were measured across the resulting printed specimens.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-76RL01830

OSTI ID:: 1658585

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1811185

Report Number(s):: PNNL-SA--146317

Journal Information:: Additive Manufacturing, Journal Name: Additive Manufacturing Vol. 36; ISSN 2214-8604

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Printing polymer blends through in situ active mixing during fused filament fabrication

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