Influence of carbon fibers on mechanical properties of materials in fdm technology

Abstract

While fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the most used additive manufacturing (AM)process today due to its ability to produce products with very complex geometries and with wide range of different thermoplastic materials. Engineers have the option of making parts with the most commonly used thermoplastics, such as ABS, PLA, PET-G, a variety of blends, as well as engineered thermoplastics for aerospace, medical, automotive, electronic and other specialty applications. The aim of this paper is to investigate tensile properties of carbon reinforced PLA and carbon reinforced PET-G materials, and make a comparison of carbon PLA with PLA and carbon PET-G with PET-G material. For every material it will be tested 2 specimens with different 3D printing orientation angle (0˚, 15˚, 30˚ and 45˚) prepared according to ISO 527-2. Specimens would be 3D printed on Ultimaker 2+ with steel nozzle and under the same conditions of 3D printing, in order to reduce impact of unwanted factors on material tensile properties. The results of this paper will be useful to see whether it is profitable to use carbon-reinforced materials and whether they really increase the tensile properties of basic materials.