Preparation and Characterization of Poly(butylene succinate)/Polylactide Blends for Fused Deposition Modeling 3D Printing

Abstract

To obtain a new type of biodegradable material with high toughness and strength used for fused deposition modeling (FDM) printing, a series of poly(butylene succinate) (PBS)-based polymer materials was prepared via blending with polylactide (PLA). The rheological, thermal, and mechanical properties as well as FDM printing performances of the blends, such as distortion, cross section, and the interlayer bond strength, were characterized. The results show that with increasing PLA content, the blends possess higher melt viscosity, larger tensile strength, and modulus, which are more suitable for FDM printing. Especially, when the content of PLA is more than 40%, distortion due to residual stress caused by volume shrinkage disappears during the printing process and thus products with good dimensional accuracy and pearl-like gloss are obtained. The results demonstrate that the blend compositions with moderate viscosity, low degree of crystallinity, and high modulus are more suitable for FDM printing. Compared with the low elongation upon breaking of commercially FDM-printed material, the PBS/PLA blend materials exhibit a typical ductile behavior with elongation of 90–300%. Therefore, besides biodegradability, the PBS/PLA blends present excellent mechanical properties and suitability as materials for FDM printing. In addition, our study is expected to provide methods for valuating the suitability of whether a thermoplastic polymer material is suitable for FDM printing or not.

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.…”

“…[6,[29][30][31] However, there is no information on stability against thermal aging and soil degradation of the reported PLA blends. [6,[32][33][34] As a result, there is a potential research gap to explore more blend systems of PLA for FDM that can withstand high temperatures with enhanced stability against soil and moisture degradation.…”

Extrusion 3D Printing of Polymeric Materials with Advanced Properties

“…However, through blending with PLA, the melt strength of PBS increases from 67 to 564 MPa with the increasing content of PLA from 0 to 60 wt%. [ 64 ] This 3D printed blend possessed higher melt viscosity, larger tensile strength, and Young's modulus. The distortion or detachment due to residual stress caused by volume shrinkage during the printing process was resolved with blending, resulting in good dimensional accuracy and pearl‐like gloss.…”

“…The use of dynamic bonds which undergo reversible breaking, exchange and reformation could be utilized to modify the printability of polymers as well as imparting various advanced functions. [ 41–58,62–67,59,68,60,69,70,72,61,73,71,82,86–88,74–81,83–85,89–133,244,258 , …”

Preparation and Rheological and Mechanical Properties of Poly(butylene succinate)/Talc Composites for Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing

“…[22] The application of PBS in the FDM process is possible because of the ductility, relatively low melting point, good processing performance, and eco-friendly nature of PBS. [23,24] Unfortunately, the melt strength of synthesized PBS is too low to meet the demands of FDM; a printed object is made by stacking the fuse extruded from printer nozzles, and if the melt strength is insufficient, the fuse stacking could collapse. Hence, it is extremely important to enhance the melt strength of PBS, and the application of adding inorganic fillers into polymer matrixes is an effective method to promote composite mechanical properties.…”