Towards Distributed Recycling with Additive Manufacturing of PET Flake Feedstocks

This study explores the potential to reach a circular economy for post-consumer Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (rPET) packaging and bottles by using it as a Distributed Recycling for Additive Manufacturing (DRAM) feedstock. Specifically, for the first time, rPET water bottle flake is processed using only an open source toolchain with Fused Particle Fabrication (FPF) or Fused Granular Fabrication (FGF) processing rather than first converting it to filament. In this study, first the impact of granulation, sifting, and heating (and their sequential combination) is quantified on the shape and size distribution of the rPET flakes. Then 3D printing tests were performed on the rPET flake with two different feed systems: an external feeder and feed tube augmented with a motorized auger screw, and an extruder-mounted hopper that enables direct 3D printing. Two Gigabot X machines were used, each with the different feed systems, and one without and the latter with extended part cooling. 3D print settings were optimized based on thermal characterization, and both systems were shown to 3D print rPET directly from shredded water bottles. Mechanical testing showed the importance of isolating rPET from moisture and that geometry was important for uniform extrusion. The mechanical strength of 3D-printed parts with FPF and inconsistent flow is lower than optimized fused filament, but adequate for a wide range of applications. Future work is needed to improve consistency and enable water bottles to be used as a widespread DRAM feedstock.

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3D Printing for Manufacturing Antique and Modern Musical Instrument Parts

Volume 14: Emerging Technologies; Materials: Genetics to Structures; Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis ◽

10.1115/imece2016-66652 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Frank Celentano ◽

Nicholas May ◽

Edward Simoneau ◽

Richard DiPasquale ◽

Zahra Shahbazi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

3D Printing ◽

Cloud Model ◽

Low Cost ◽

Sound Quality ◽

Musical Instrument ◽

Original Design ◽

Manufacturing Method ◽

3D Print ◽

3D Printed

Professional musicians today often invest in obtaining antique or vintage instruments. These pieces can be used as collector items or more practically, as performance instruments to give a unique sound of a past music era. Unfortunately, these relics are rare, fragile, and particularly expensive to obtain for a modern day musician. The opportunity to reproduce the sound of an antique instrument through the use of additive manufacturing (3D printing) can make this desired product significantly more affordable. 3D printing allows for duplication of unique parts in a low cost and environmentally friendly method, due to its minimal material waste. Additionally, it allows complex geometries to be created without the limitations of other manufacturing techniques. This study focuses on the primary differences, particularly sound quality and comfort, between saxophone mouthpieces that have been 3D printed and those produced by more traditional methods. Saxophone mouthpieces are commonly derived from a milled blank of either hard rubber, ebonite or brass. Although 3D printers can produce a design with the same or similar materials, they are typically created in a layered pattern. This can potentially affect the porosity and surface of a mouthpiece, ultimately affecting player comfort and sound quality. To evaluate this, acoustic tests will be performed. This will involve both traditionally manufactured mouthpieces and 3D prints of the same geometry created from x-ray scans obtained using a ZEISS Xradia Versa 510. The scans are two dimensional images which go through processes of reconstruction and segmentation, which is the process of assigning material to voxels. The result is a point cloud model, which can be used for 3D printing. High quality audio recordings of each mouthpiece will be obtained and a sound analysis will be performed. The focus of this analysis is to determine what qualities of the sound are changed by the manufacturing method and how true the sound of a 3D printed mouthpiece is to its milled counterpart. Additive manufacturing can lead to more inconsistent products of the original design due to the accuracy, repeatability and resolution of the printer, as well as the layer thickness. In order for additive manufacturing to be a common practice of mouthpiece manufacturing, the printer quality must be tested for its precision to an original model. The quality of a 3D print can also have effects on the comfort of the player. Lower quality 3D prints have an inherent roughness which can cause discomfort and difficulty for the musician. This research will determine the effects of manufacturing method on the sound quality and overall comfort of a mouthpiece. In addition, we will evaluate the validity of additive manufacturing as a method of producing mouthpieces.

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Towards Distributed Recycling with Additive Manufacturing of PET Flake Feedstocks

10.20944/preprints202007.0707.v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Helen A. Little ◽

Nagendra G. Tanikella ◽

Matthew Reich ◽

Matthew J. Fiedler ◽

Samantha L. Snabes ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

Physical Properties ◽

Circular Economy ◽

Thermal Characterization ◽

Feeding Tubes ◽

Recycled Polyethylene ◽

History Of ◽

Future Work ◽

The Impact ◽

Shape And Size

This study explores the potential to reach a circular economy for post-consumer recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) packaging and bottles by using it as a distributed recycling for additive manufacturing (DRAM) feedstock. Specifically, rPET is processed using only an open source toolchain with fused particle fabrication (FPF) or fused granular fabrication (FGF) processing. In this study, first the impact of granulation, sifting and heating (and their combination) is quantified on the shape and size distribution of the rPET flakes. Then feeding studies were performed to see if they could be printed through an external feeder or needed to be direct printed with a hopper using two Gigabot X machines, one with extended part cooling and one without. Print settings were optimized based on thermal characterization and for the latter which was shown to print rPET directly from shredded water bottles mechanical testing is performed. The results showed that geometry was important for extended feeding tubes and direct printed using a hopper. Further there is a wide disparity in the physical properties of rPET from water bottles depending on source and the history of the material. Future work is needed to enable water bottles to be used as a widespread DRAM feedstock.

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Fused Filament Fabrication, a New Fabrication Paradigm for 3D Printing Capacitive Sensors: Design, Fabrication, and Characterization for Liquid Level Measurements.

10.21203/rs.3.rs-875418/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gianni Stano ◽

Attilio Di Nisio ◽

Anna Maria Lanzolla ◽

Mattia Ragolia ◽

Gianluca Percoco

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

3D Printing ◽

Flexible Substrate ◽

Capacitive Sensor ◽

Single Step ◽

Liquid Level ◽

Capacitive Sensors ◽

Fused Filament Fabrication ◽

3D Print ◽

3D Printed

Abstract In recent years, the exploitation of Additive Manufacturing technologies for the fabrication of different kinds of sensors has abruptly increased: in particular, a growing interest for extrusion-based techniques has emerged. This research proposes the exploitation of Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) process and two commercial materials (one flexible and one conductive) for the monolithic fabrication of a bendable, coplanar capacitive sensor. The whole sensor, consisting of a flexible substrate and two electrodes, has been fabricated in a single-step printing cycle: Design for Additive Manufacturing approach was used, setting out a methodology to direct 3D print thin and close tracks with conductive materials, in order to obtain high capacitance values measurable by common measurement instrumentations. Despite a huge exploitation of FFF technology for piezoresistive-based sensors, this manufacturing process has never been used for the fabrication of coplanar capacitive sensors since the manufacture of thin and close conductive tracks (key requirement in coplanar capacitive sensors) is a challenging task, mainly due to low manufacturability of extruded conductive beads with a high level of detail. Two versions of the sensor were developed: the first one with an embedded 3D printed coverage (ready to use) and the second one which requires a further manual post-processing to seal the electrodes. The main benefits related to the exploitation of FFF technology for these sensors are: i) the reduction of the number of different manufacturing processes employed, from at least two in traditional manufacturing approach up to one, ii) the exploitation of a cost-effective technology compared to traditional high-cost technologies employed (i.e. lithography, inkjet etc.) iii) the reduction of manual and assembly tasks (one of the proposed versions does not require any further task) , and iv) the cost-effectiveness of the sensors (in a range between 0.27 € and 0.38 €). The two developed prototypes have been tested demonstrating all their potentialities in the field of liquid level sensing, showing results consistent with the ones found in scientific literature: good sensitivity and high linearity and repeatability were proved when different liquids were employed. These 3D printed liquid level sensors have these features: i) flexible sensor, ii) the length is limited only by the machine workspace, iii) they can be either applied outside of the traditional reservoirs or embedded into the reservoirs (by 3D printing both the reservoir and sensor in the same manufacturing cycle), and iv) simple calibration.Finally, the bendability of these sensors paves the way toward their application for liquid level sensing into tanks with non-conventional shapes and for other application fields (i.e. soft robotics, non-invasive monitoring for biomedical applications).

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Mechanical Recyclability of Polypropylene Composites Produced by Material Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing

Polymers ◽

10.3390/polym11081318 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (8) ◽

pp. 1318 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Martin Spoerk ◽

Florian Arbeiter ◽

Ivan Raguž ◽

Clemens Holzer ◽

Joamin Gonzalez-Gutierrez

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

Chain Scission ◽

Fused Filament Fabrication ◽

Polypropylene Composites ◽

Material Extrusion ◽

Wide Range ◽

Tremendous Amount ◽

3D Printed ◽

The Impact

Due to a lack of long-term experience with burgeoning material extrusion-based additive manufacturing technology, also known as fused filament fabrication (FFF), considerable amounts of expensive material will continue to be wasted until a defect-free 3D-printed component can be finalized. In order to lead this advanced manufacturing technique toward cleaner production and to save costs, this study addresses the ability to remanufacture a wide range of commercially available filaments. Most of them either tend to degrade by chain scission or crosslinking. Only polypropylene (PP)-based filaments appear to be particularly thermally stable and therefore suitable for multiple remanufacturing sequences. As the extrusion step exerts the largest influence on the material in terms of temperature and shear load, this study focused on the morphological, rheological, thermal, processing, tensile, and impact properties of a promising PP composite in the course of multiple consecutive extrusions as well as the impact of additional heat stabilizers. Even after 15 consecutive filament extrusions, the stabilized additively manufactured PP composite revealed an unaltered morphology and therefore the same tensile and impact strength as the initial material. As the viscosity of the material of the 15th extrusion was nearly identical to that of the 1st extrusion sequence, the processability both in terms of extrusion and FFF was outstanding, despite the tremendous amount of shear and thermal stress that was undergone. The present work provides key insights into one possible step toward more sustainable production through FFF.

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Additive Manufacturing, Modeling and Performance Evaluation of 3D Printed Fins for Surfboards

MRS Advances ◽

10.1557/adv.2017.107 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (16) ◽

pp. 913-920 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Reece D. Gately ◽

Stephen Beirne ◽

Geoff Latimer ◽

Matthew Shirlaw ◽

Buyung Kosasih ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

3D Printing ◽

Computer Aided Design ◽

Tracking System ◽

Fibre Glass ◽

Wide Range ◽

3D Printed ◽

And Performance ◽

Viable Approach ◽

Aided Design

ABSTRACTWe demonstrate that Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) is a viable approach to rapidly prototype personalised fins for surfboards. Surfing is an iconic sport that is extremely popular in coastal regions around the world. We use computer aided design and 3D printing of a wide range of composite materials to print fins for surfboards, e.g. ABS, carbon fibre, fibre glass and amorphous thermoplastic poly(etherimide) resins. The mechanical characteristics of our 3D printed fins were found to be comparable to commercial fins. Computational fluid dynamics was employed to calculate longitudinal (drag) and tangential (turning) forces, which are important for surfboard maneuverability, stability and speed. A commercial tracking system was used to evaluate the performance of 3D printed fins under real-world conditions (i.e. surfing waves). These data showed that the surfing performance of surfboards with 3D printed fins is similar to that of surfboards with commercial fins.

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Embedding Carbon Dots in Superabsorbent Polymers for Additive Manufacturing

Polymers ◽

10.3390/polym10080921 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (8) ◽

pp. 921 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Yiqun Zhou ◽

Keenan Mintz ◽

Cagri Oztan ◽

Sajini Hettiarachchi ◽

Zhili Peng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

Citric Acid ◽

3D Printing ◽

Carbon Dots ◽

High Yield ◽

Sodium Polyacrylate ◽

Superabsorbent Polymers ◽

Low Degree ◽

3D Printed ◽

First Time

A type of orange carbon dots (O-CDs) synthesized via an ultrasonication route with citric acid and 1,2-phenylenediamine as precursors was embedded into sodium polyacrylate (SPA) as the ink for 3D printing. Characterizations of these spherical O-CDs revealed an ultra-small size (~2 nm) and excitation-independent, but solvent dependent, emission. The O-CDs were evenly distributed with low degree of aggregation in sodium polyacrylate (SPA), which was achieved due to the property that SPA can absorb water together with O-CDs. The 3D printed photoluminescent objective with the ink revealed a great potential for high yield application of these materials for additive manufacturing. This also represents the first time, bare CDs have been reported as a photoluminescent material in 3D printing, as well as the first time SPA has been reported as a material for 3D printing.

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Impact of 3D Printing on Automotive Parts

Issue 4 - Journal of Science and Technology ◽

10.46243/jst.2020.v5.i3.pp79-84 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 79-84

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

3D Printing ◽

Manufacturing Process ◽

Manufacturing Technology ◽

Automotive Components ◽

Additive Manufacturing Technology ◽

Engine Part ◽

Automotive Parts ◽

3D Printed ◽

The Impact

The impact of 3D Printing on automotive parts is investigated. 3D printing is an additive manufacturing technology to rapidly create prototypes by laying down a broad range of material onto successive layers of surfaces. In the automotive parts generally metal or alloy materials are used in the manufacturing. In this research we tested effect of 3D Printing on different automotive components. For the testing purpose we used Front Hub, Rear Hub, Knuckle, Calliper, CAM (engine part) and Steering pedal. After manufacturing in FDM printer using PLA material, the different properties were checked, and compare the result of existing manufactured components with the 3D printed one. The results showed that the 3D printed components having lesser weight up-to 35% to 40% with better geometric finishing. It also allows the complex geometric in the manufacturing process.

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Fused Filament Fabrication 3D Printed Polylactic Acid Electroosmotic Pumps

Lab on a Chip ◽

10.1039/d1lc00452b ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Liang Wu ◽

Stephen Beirne ◽

Joan-Marc Cabot Canyelles ◽

Brett Paull ◽

Gordon G. Wallace ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

3D Printing ◽

Polylactic Acid ◽

Fused Filament Fabrication ◽

Flexible Approach ◽

Electroosmotic Pump ◽

3D Printed ◽

Electroosmotic Pumps

Additive manufacturing (3D printing) offers a flexible approach for the production of bespoke microfluidic structures such as the electroosmotic pump. Here a readily accessible fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing...

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Microstructured Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor Based on Inkjet 3D Printing Using Photocurable Resins with Tailored Refractive Index

Polymers ◽

10.3390/polym13152518 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (15) ◽

pp. 2518

Author(s):

Nunzio Cennamo ◽

Lorena Saitta ◽

Claudio Tosto ◽

Francesco Arcadio ◽

Luigi Zeni ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Surface Plasmon Resonance ◽

3D Printing ◽

Surface Plasmon ◽

Plasmon Resonance ◽

Optical Sensor ◽

Low Cost ◽

3D Print ◽

Spr Sensor ◽

Resonance Sensor ◽

3D Printed

In this work, a novel approach to realize a plasmonic sensor is presented. The proposed optical sensor device is designed, manufactured, and experimentally tested. Two photo-curable resins are used to 3D print a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. Both numerical and experimental analyses are presented in the paper. The numerical and experimental results confirm that the 3D printed SPR sensor presents performances, in term of figure of merit (FOM), very similar to other SPR sensors made using plastic optical fibers (POFs). For the 3D printed sensor, the measured FOM is 13.6 versus 13.4 for the SPR-POF configuration. The cost analysis shows that the 3D printed SPR sensor can be manufactured at low cost (∼15 €) that is competitive with traditional sensors. The approach presented here allows to realize an innovative SPR sensor showing low-cost, 3D-printing manufacturing free design and the feasibility to be integrated with other optical devices on the same plastic planar support, thus opening undisclosed future for the optical sensor systems.

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3D Technology – Additive Manufacturing Applications and Prospects (Vol. 24, No. 9, Full Issue)

Asia-Pacific Biotech News ◽

10.1142/s0219030320001093 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 24 (09) ◽

Keyword(s):

Additive Manufacturing ◽

3D Printing ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Real World ◽

Vaccine Development ◽

Health Screening ◽

Wide Range ◽

The World ◽

Real World Applications ◽

Manufacturing Applications

For the month of September 2020, APBN dives into the world of 3D printing and its wide range of real-world applications. Keeping our focus on the topic of the year, the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore the environmental impact of the global outbreak as well as gain insight to the top 5 vaccine platforms used in vaccine development. Discover more about technological advancements and how it is assisting innovation in geriatric health screening.

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