Development of 3D printable cenosphere‐reinforced polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) filaments for lightweight structural applications

Abstract

Present research evaluates the feasibility of producing polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) filaments reinforced with cenosphere (CS), which have great potential to develop syntactic foam composites (SFC) for several applications, that is, from automotive to aerospace. A melt flow extrusion technique was used to reinforce PETG with different weight fractions (i.e., 0, 10, 20, 30, and 40 wt%) cenosphere, and further, the thermal, mechanical, and physical properties of the prepared feedstocks were investigated in detail. Results indicated that Young's modulus, load‐bearing capacity, and ultimate tensile strength of PETG filament with 40 wt% CS were 1652.1 5 MPa, 76.91 1 N, and 31.97 1 MPa, respectively, which is similar to virgin PETG filament. In addition, the porosity of the CS‐reinforced PETG filaments decreased with increasing concentration of the CS in the PETG matrix. Such cenosphere‐filled filaments possess attractive thermo‐mechanical and physical properties to develop high‐quality SFC through additive manufacturing (AM) routine.Highlights PETG/cenosphere based 3D printing filaments were developed. The modulus and strength significantly improved by adding 40% cenosphere. The porosity decreased with increasing cenosphere weight fraction. Addition of cenosphere affected water absorption characteristics of filaments.

Polymer‐based filaments with embedded magnetocaloric Ni‐Mn‐Ga Heusler alloy particles for additive manufacturing

“…Conversely, the most extended and accessible AM technique, known as fused deposition modeling (FDM), uses a polymer material. This method is gaining more and more attention as these polymeric materials can incorporate multiple types of fillers 28–32 to provide some type of functionality to the built parts (e.g., electrical, 33,34 magnetic, 35–38 optical 39,40 ) or an improved mechanical resistance 41,42 while preserving the manufacturing advantages. The low melting temperatures of typical polymers prevent the modification of the properties of the magnetocaloric fillers during fabrication and printing 43,44 .…”

Utilizing in-nozzle impregnation for enhancing the strength of recycled PET-derived 3D printed continuous banana fiber reinforced bio-composites

“…Among all, FDM is one of the AM techniques that has gained extensive recognition owing to its advanced benefits, encompassing cheaper operational cost, minimal material wastage, ease of accessibility and diverse material selection. In this process, a continuous filament of thermoplastic material is extruded through a heated nozzle, which traverses along a predetermined path to systematically fabricate the desired object layer-by-layer (Kumar et al, 2024;Kumar and Negi, 2023a). This technique is mainly used to fabricate 3D structures with tailored properties and integrated…”

“…Among all, FDM is one of the AM techniques that has gained extensive recognition owing to its advanced benefits, encompassing cheaper operational cost, minimal material wastage, ease of accessibility and diverse material selection. In this process, a continuous filament of thermoplastic material is extruded through a heated nozzle, which traverses along a predetermined path to systematically fabricate the desired object layer-by-layer (Kumar et al , 2024; Kumar and Negi, 2023a). This technique is mainly used to fabricate 3D structures with tailored properties and integrated functionalities based on engineered features for different application such as rapid tooling of disposable molds (Guerrero-Vacas et al , 2024), scaffolds for tissue engineering (Goranov et al , 2020; Higuera et al , 2021), aerospace (Mosaddek et al , 2018) and many more applications (Demir and Seki, 2023; Mishra et al , 2023a).…”

“…Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, is an advanced processing technique to manufacture parts with intricate geometry layer-by-layer using the computer-aided design (CAD) model (Mishra et al , 2022; Negi and Suresh Dhiman, 2016), and a tendency to fabricate personalized and customized products with minimal material waste. Various AM processes such as fused deposition modeling (FDM) (Ahmad et al , 2023; Kumar and Negi, 2023a, 2023b), selective laser sintering (SLS) (Lopes et al , 2023; Parandoush and Lin, 2017), stereolithography (SLA) (Borra and Neigapula, 2023; Negi et al , 2023), direct ink writing (DIW) (Mantelli et al , 2021), inkjet printing (IP) (Nachimuthu and P.K., 2023), poly-jet printing (PJP) (Liu et al , 2022), etc. are playing a significant role in Industry 4.0.…”