Colloquia

Summary

Thermoplastic products created with Additive Manufacturing (AM) are often made of a single material. Demanding applications may require the use of performance materials such as Polyether Ether Ketone (PEEK) or (short) fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites. Printing with multiple materials creates interesting opportunities to aid the production process, add functionality or improve performance of printed products.

Several challenges emerge when 3D printing with multiple or composite materials. For example, disparities in coefficients of thermal expansion, between materials or because of anisotropic behaviour, can lead to deformations during and/or shortly after the printing process.

The objectives of this research are twofold. First, suitable applications for multi-material 3D printing for the company Bond3D are found. Secondly, a warpage mechanism during the 3D printing of short carbon fibre reinforced PEEK is investigated, for which the thermal expansion behaviour is studied using Thermal Mechanical Analyses (TMA). The thesis demonstrates that it is possible to predict and compensate deformations by altering the input geometry. This makes it possible to accurately print short carbon fibre reinforced PEEK products. The process can be applied to other materials with anisotropic thermal expansion, but it is not feasible to integrate it in the current compensation workflow.