A comparative experimental study of additive manufacturing feasibility faced to injection molding process for polymeric parts

摘要

Faced to the growing advance of the additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, in several branches of industrial, academic, and even personal fields, and given that the perspective is that in 20 years, everyone will have a 3D printer at home, this work aims to characterize the mechanical behavior of ABS material parts fabricated by two different manufacturing processes for a comparative study of technical feasibility. Parts were manufactured using a low-cost 3D printer, and their results compared with parts fabricated by the thermoplastic injection process. In order to make the comparison possible, the 3D-printed and injected coupons were dimensionally analyzed for evaluation if the shapes and dimensions are standardized according to the reference standards for tensile testing. Then, the mechanical strength tests were carried out, aiming to verifying the deformations present in the coupons. In addition, analyses related to points of failure in the coupons were performed using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM) method, to verify the superficial characteristics of the ruptured region for each coupon. Finally, the results showed that the 3D-printed parts have a good mechanical behavior when pulled on and good dimensional accuracy based on low percentage errors. Thus, the comparative results show that the AM technology can be used even when tight tolerances are required for a given manufacturing process. Finally, this research contributes to witness the growing potential of AM technology application in the various segments of the industry, due to its advantages and benefits faced to other industrial processes.