Strategy To Improve Printability of Renewable Resource-Based Engineering Plastic Tailored for FDM Applications

Elizabeth V Diederichs; Maisyn C Picard; Boon Peng Chang; Manjusri Misra; Deborah F Mielewski; Amar K Mohanty

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b02795

Strategy To Improve Printability of Renewable Resource-Based Engineering Plastic Tailored for FDM Applications

ACS Omega. 2019 Nov 19;4(23):20297-20307. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02795. eCollection 2019 Dec 3.

Authors

Elizabeth V Diederichs^{1

2}, Maisyn C Picard^{1

2}, Boon Peng Chang¹, Manjusri Misra^{1

2}, Deborah F Mielewski³, Amar K Mohanty^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre, Department of Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, Crop Science Building, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada.
² School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Thornbrough Building, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada.
³ Research and Innovation Center, Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan 48124, United States.

Abstract

This work features the first-time use of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT), a biobased engineering thermoplastic, for fused deposition modeling (FDM) applications. Additives such as chain extenders (CEs) and impact modifiers are traditionally used to improve the processability of polymers for injection molding; as a proof of concept for their use in FDM, the same strategies were applied to PTT to improve its printability. The filament processing conditions and printing parameters were optimized to generate complete, warpage-free samples. The blends were characterized through physical, thermal, viscoelastic, and morphological analyses. In the optimal blend (90 wt % PTT, 10 wt % impact modifier, and 0.5 phr CE), the filament diameter was improved by ∼150%, the size of the spherulites significantly decreased to 5% of the ∼26 μm spherulite size found in neat PTT, and the melt flow index decreased to ∼4.7 g/10 min. From this blend, FDM samples with a high impact performance of ∼61 J/m were obtained, which are comparable to other conventional FDM thermoplastics. The ability to print complete and warpage-free samples from this blend suggests a new filament feedstock material for industrial and home-use FDM applications. This paper discusses methods to improve hard-to-print polymers and presents the improved printability of PTT as proof of these methods' effectiveness.