Local Viscosity Control Printing for High-Throughput Additive Manufacturing of Polymers

Abstract

Fused deposition modeling's (FDM) throughput is limited by process physics as well as practical considerations favoring single-head polymer extrusion. To expedite the thermoplastic additive manufacturing process, we propose a parallelized material deposition process called local viscosity control (LVC) additive manufacturing. LVC prints an entire layer in one step by selectively modulating the viscosity of polymer feedstock in contact with a heated wire mesh. Layers of molten polymer are contact printed, with the relative motion between the wire mechanism and a build plate allowing wetting and surface tension to transfer selectively heated, lower viscosity regions of polymer to a fixed substrate. Experiments demonstrate the viability of this process using a single cell depositing layered polycarbonate pixels. Theoretical analysis shows this process may offer similar capabilities in resolution to conventional FDM with a significantly higher production rate for commonly available input power.

Additive manufacturing of an elastic poly(ester)urethane for cartilage tissue engineering

“…1 a and b), as compared to traditional polyesters used for additive manufacturing. Increasing molecular weight of polymers generally results on a higher viscosity that, together with the thermal degradation potential (on the presence of small amounts of water) of polyesters limit their exploitation in additive manufacturing applications [52] . After careful optimization of fabrication parameters such as temperature, feed speed and printer-head travel speed, PEU scaffolds were fabricated with an initial degradation step that enabled their extrusion through the printer needle.…”

Automated non-destructive inspection of Fused Filament Fabrication components using Thermographic Signal Reconstruction

“…FFF machines are low-cost, geometrically flexible, capable of holding tight tolerances and using varied materials, and have large work envelopes. Recent advances increase production rate, further improving FFF's fitness for custom manufacturing-as-a-service [1]. Such high-quality, granular customization is necessary in healthcare, where AM is used to create surgical implants or assistive devices [2] or in aerospace, where strong, lightweight components are essential.…”

Characterization and Processing Behavior of Heated Aluminum-Polycarbonate Composite Build Plates for the FDM Additive Manufacturing Process

“…Many of the early FDM machines had wood, perfboard, thin glass, or acrylic build plates, but all of these were susceptible to warping and poor material adhesion. Recent technology developments have settled into using primarily tempered glass or heated aluminum build plates (Figure 3a,b) [26][27][28][29][30][31].…”