Internal geometry effect of structured PLA materials manufactured by dropplet-based 3D printer on its mechanical properties

摘要

Rapid Prototyping (RP) technologies, the manufacturing technology with less time consuming including high precission and complicated structure of products, are now become high demanding technologies. Those technologies can be base on top-down or bottom-up approaches. One of the bottom-up approach of RP technology is 3D printing machine. In this research, we have succeed to apply the droplet-based 3D printer to make the structured PLA (Polylactic Acid) materials with different internal geometry structures. The internal geometry used are triangle and honeycomb structure with different size of each symmetry axis of 4.5 mm and 9 mm and the thickness varied of 1 mm and 2 mm as well. The mechanical properties of those structures including tensile and bending stregth are evaluated by using tensile and flexural test respectively. Test results show that the best performance obtained by measuring its tensile and flexural strength is the sampel with triangle geometry of 9 mm geometrical size and 2 mm of thickness. The tensile strength and flexural strength values of the specimens are 59.2996 MPa and 123 MPa respectively.