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USABILITY OF THERMOPLASTICS FOR 3D PRINTING OF PROTOTYPE PRODUCTS

1 FORMÁNEK Josef
Co-authors:
1 JANDOVÁ Andrea 2 BUNDA Zbyněk 2 KUČEROVÁ Ludmila
Institutions:
1 University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Department of Machine Design, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,Univerzitni 22, 306 14 Pilsen, Czech Republic, EU; e-mail: formanek@kks.zcu.cz
2 University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Regional Technological Institute, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Univerzitni 22, 306 14 Pilsen, Czech Republic; e-mail: skal@rti.zcu.cz
Conference:
25th Anniversary International Conference on Metallurgy and Materials, Hotel Voronez I, Brno, Czech Republic, EU, May 25th - 27th 2016
Proceedings:
Proceedings 25th Anniversary International Conference on Metallurgy and Materials
Pages:
1406-1411
ISBN:
978-80-87294-67-3
ISSN:
2694-9296
Published:
14th December 2016
Proceedings of the conference were published in Web of Science and Scopus.
Metrics:
468 views / 233 downloads
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Abstract

New materials are available for the well-known thermal process of 3D printing which involves consecutive deposition of layers of heated thermoplastics. This means that machine components can be made not only from the most common plastics, such as ABS, but also from PLA, HIPS, PET, PVA, PETG, PC, and others. By means of 3D printing, intricately shaped parts can be produced in a flexible manner and prototypes can be easily fabricated from various thermoplastics. This paper demonstrates the use of a thermoplastic aliphatic polyester (PLA) for 3D printing of a part intended for operation under mild thermal loading. One of the advantages of PLA is its good degradability. This is because its production is based on the use of corn starch or dextrose. Despite this, PLA structures can be created which exhibit higher hardness and strength than ordinary ABS.

Keywords: 3D printing; PLA; thermoplastic materials; renewable resource; polylactid acid

© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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