Comparative analysis of printing parameters effect on mechanical properties of natural PLA and advanced PLA-X material

Abstract

FDM is a commercially widespread 3D printing technology which uses thermoplastic materials for building prototypes and functional parts. Most used materials in this technology are PLA (PolyLactic Acid) and ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) materials which contain dissimilar mechanical properties and printing abilities. PLA is considered as a good material for prototypes and parts that acquire higher dimensional accuracy, and is considered as a material that is easier to print than ABS. Advantages of ABS material, compared to standard PLA are better mechanical properties, sufficiently higher printing speeds and higher heat resistivity. Deficiency of ABS over PLA is shrinking of ABS material after 3D printing-resulting in poor dimensional accuracy or failure during printing. A newly available material PLA-X ("mcPP", Mitsubishi Chemical, Japan) houses advantages of both mentioned materials and may lead to wider commercial and industrial use. Different printing parameters of the same material may lead to different mechanical properties of the finished part. The aim of this paper is to compare how different printing parameters effect on mechanical properties of standard PLA and PLA-X-which is a material that has similar dimensional accuracy of finished parts as PLA and possesses higher mechanical properties like ABS. Samples of PLA and PLA-X where printed in five different printing regimes, varying layer height, number of outline perimeters, infill density and sample humidity, with five samples each (according to ISO 527-2 international standard) and used for mechanical testing on standard tensile testing machine.