Fused deposition modeling of polypropylene-aluminium silicate dihydrate microcomposites

Abstract

Polypropylene (PP) undergoes fast crystallization and resulting in rigorous shrinkage when it is subjected to high temperature likewise of the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process. This research study focuses on the investigation of the processing parameters and factors that decrease the warpage of PP during the FDM process. Aluminium silicate dihydrate (K) microparticles of different ratios were melt blended with PP by a twin-screw extruder, and filaments of about 1.7 mm diameter were extruded in a single screw extruder. Then, the extruded filaments were used to fabricate the dumbbells structure through the FDM process. The effects of optimizing the fused deposition temperature, coating the chamber with thick papers/fabrics, and coating a printer bed with PP material were also investigated in this study. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, melt flow, and mechanical properties testing instruments are used to analyze the microparticles dispersion, crystallization, flow, and mechanical properties of resulting samples. Uniformly dispersed filler and increased printing chamber temperature result in an increase of crystallization temperature and improve the dimensional accuracy of fused deposited specimens. The fused deposited PP-K10 wt% composite showed an improvement of up to 32% in tensile modulus compared to the neat PP.