• Longana, Marco Luigi
• Ivanov, Dmitry S.
• Krajangsawasdi, Narongkorn
• Woods, Ben K. S.
• Hamerton, Ian

Abstract

Fused filament forming (FFF), a thermoplastic layer-by-layer additive manufacturing technique, can build complex geometries, reducing manufacturing defects created with conventional methods, e.g. the interruption of fibre continuity by machining through-holes, by defining an alternative printing path. Aligned discontinuous fibre composites (ADFRC) preforms, produced with a novel fibre alignment technology, High Performance Discontinuous Fibre (HiPerDiF), were used as a reinforcement for poly(L-lactic acid) (PLA) and then reshaped to a circular-shaped filament for FFF using a specially designed rolling machine. The physical and mechanical properties of the produced HiPerDiF-PLA filament was investigated. After that, the filament was printed by a general 3D printer to fabricate an open-hole sample with a curvilinear printing path around the hole. The printed open-hole specimen strength was compared to a hand lay-up of the HiPerDiF-thin tape with a same-size cut hole to examine the difference between the printed and the conventionally manufactured structures.

Topics

• Deposition
• strength
• composite
• defect
• forming
• thermoplastic
• additive manufacturing
• aligned
• field-flow fractionation