Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Civil/Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineering
Marquese Pollard - Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
Advances in Additive Manufacturing (AM) or Three-Dimensional Printing (3DP) has been extensively developing over the last 20 years due to various advantages over traditional manufacturing methods. Although initially viewed as a mere prototyping tool; the advancement of material functionalization and end-use has led to AM being used to fabricate final production components as well as tooling that is directly used to create composite parts. Agreeably the most important aspect is the expected cost saving this technology offers to product manufacturers as well as hobbyist. One aspect of AM that needs further research is layer adhesion specifically for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). Researchers have found that parts fabricated via FDM process tend to have weak adhesion properties between printed layers. As a result, parts are more susceptible to failure when loaded in the direction of layer build. At the microscale level, pores are often also developed within and around the exterior of the printed component due to non-uniform cooling of the extruded material.
This study aims to understand if multi-material printing can be utilized to fabricate a hermetic 3D printed component. The goal of this research is to utilize various materials within a single build sequence to enhance bonding characteristics between extruded layers to create an isotropic component independent of build orientation. A standard dogbone tensile specimen will be created using various build orientations to determine mechanical properties. A comparison between multi-material and single material extruded specimens will be used to validate the potential of this technique. A test vessel will also be fabricated with multi-material deposition to determine if this method can be used to create airtight additively manufactured component without any postprocessing. Through this research, we hope to close the gaps unmet by tradition single material extrusion which will lead to more functional printed components.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): I want to thank the National Science Foundation for Awarding my University with a multi-million dollar grant. My professor received the CREST Grant which funded my project and could lead to me pursuing my doctoral degree.
Faculty Advisor: Dr, Tarik Dickens, dickens@eng.famu.fsu.edu
Role: This project is apart of my master's thesis. I completed this research alone. I fabricated and tested all components.