Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene and Polypropylene Blend with Enhanced Thermal and Mechanical Properties for Fused Filament Fabrication

Abstract

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is the oldest fused filament fabrication (FFF) material that shows low stability to thermal aging due to hydrogen abstraction of the butadiene monomer. A novel blend of ABS, polypropylene (PP), and polyethylene graft maleic anhydride (PE-g-MAH) is presented for FFF. ANOVA was used to analyze the effects of three variables (bed temperature, printing temperature, and aging interval) on tensile properties of the specimens made on a custom-built pellet printer. The compression and flexure properties were also investigated for the highest thermal combinations. The blend showed high thermal stability with enhanced strength despite three days of aging, as well as high bed and printing temperatures. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) provided significant chemical interactions. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) confirmed the thermal stability with enhanced enthalpy of glass transition and melting. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) also revealed high temperatures for onset and 50% mass degradation. Signs of chemical grafting and physical interlocking in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) also explained the thermo-mechanical stability of the blend.Therefore, a need arises to explore a solution for a thermally stable ABS for large-scale and high temperature FFF applications.Different methods were adopted to increase the thermal stability of ABS [11,12], such as blending [11,12], addition of flame retardants [13], stabilizers [11], etc. The most recommended method in terms of gaining both thermal and mechanical stability is blending with high-temperature polymers [12][13][14]. In this regard, polycarbonate (PC) is the most successful polymer that reports the best-in-class blend properties with ABS [14] as compared to contemporary ones in FFF, such as ABS/UHMWPE/SEBS, ABS:SEBS [15,16], ABS:SEBS-g-MAH [17], ABS/PMMA [18], and ABS/SMA [5]. The addition of PC to ABS was reported with improvements in both thermal and mechanical properties (tensile, compression, and flexure) [13,19]. However, thermal improvement is interpreted as an improvement in the onset of the degradation temperature of the non-aged blend obtained in thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) [20]. Researchers found detrimental effects of annealing on the morphology of an ABS/PC blend that resulted in a decrease in thermal stability [20]. Therefore, it reveals a need to explore a blend of ABS that can withstand thermal aging at high temperatures with good mechanical properties (tensile, compression, and flexure).Polypropylene (PP) is one of the eminent polyolefins with good chemical and mechanical properties [21]. However, it presents warpage and swelling in an FFF process. This is overcome by blending with different printable polymers or fillers (fibers). For example, Peng et al. [22] reported enhanced mechanical strength with the addition of polyamide (PA6) and POE-g-MAH. Ramis et al. [21] reported enhanced thermal stability in the TGA analysis of PP/starch. Mourad et al. [23] found good resistance to thermal aging...

Polylactic acid and high‐density polyethylene blend: Characterization and application in additive manufacturing

“…The future work on this aspect will be based upon investigation of the effects on the mechanical properties of the optimal composition of PE-g-MAH and HDPE. This will lead to a noteworthy comparison of a 100% F I G U R E 1 7 Comparison of novel printing blend with the literature [5,6,30,[32][33][34]36,37,77] [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] miscible blend with a combined grafted and interlocked blend. Based on the overlapped SD for mass loss in soil degradation due to small sample size, the future work may also include a proper statistical design of experiment for water absorption and soil degradation analysis.…”

“…Better graft or interlocked molecular structures are reported to achieve better resistance to degradation. [5,9,36,37] Therefore, there is a potential research gap to explore the partial biodegradable blend systems of PLA with HDPE for FDM that can withstand moisture and high temperatures with enhanced biodegradable life.…”

Evolution of 3D Printing Methods and Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage

“…Despite producing robust structures, the process is time consuming and requires inert conditions making it expensive for industrial use. A lower cost option is to use a material extrusion (ME) process such as fused filament fabrication where material is drawn through a computer controlled nozzle where it is melted and deposited layer by layer to a desired shape [21] (Figure 1a). The process uses readily available acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA) thermoplastics, however metal particles coated in plastics have been recently introduced.…”

Expanding Puck and Schürmann Inter Fiber Fracture Criterion for Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic 3D-Printed Composite Materials

“…The introduction of high performance materials in 3D-printing initially required significant investigation into their mechanical behavior. It is well-established in the literature that their resulting mechanical properties also depend on the process parameters in addition to the individual constituent properties [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Many researchers have been working on determining the mechanical properties of short fibers reinforced 3D-printed materials [14,15,[23][24][25][26].…”