Abstract
Additive Manufacturing of thermoplastic polymers is currently being conducted on both large and small scales for industrial and research applications. Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) is traditionally used to manufacture structural components for tooling, rapid prototyping, and end-use components. A dual hopper system was installed on the BAAM system allowing for multi-material structures to be manufactured and a pellet mixer added alongside the dryers. The pellet mixer, installed, can take up to four different components to create a custom blend of premanufactured pellets to create a new material composition for extrusion. Lightweight polymers can be extruded from the BAAM extruder by adding foaming agents to this mixture. Foaming agents can be in the form of expandable foaming agents or syntactic glass balloons, or through using endo/exothermic reaction pellets. This upgrade can create parts with significantly lower densities than traditional printed structures and can be done in high and low resolution with specific densities of 0.3-0.7 g/cm3. Foams can be utilized for multi-material light-weighting, complex lightweight core structures, packaging molds for high-cost components, etc. When creating foam components, layer times, the quantity of foaming agent, nozzle diameter, and heat exposure can directly impact the quality of the printed structure. In the case of high resolution (small nozzle diameter) foam prints, maintaining a constant bead width, layer height, and foaming consistency can be very challenging. In addition, lightweight structures such as flying wings and foam package molds can be created concisely by controlling various processing parameters such as tool pathing, extruder RPM, and material selection.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Composites and Advanced Materials Expo, CAMX 2022 |
| Publisher | The Composites and Advanced Materials Expo (CAMX) |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781713870937 |
| State | Published - 2022 |
| Event | 2022 Annual Composites and Advanced Materials Expo, CAMX 2022 - Anaheim, United States Duration: Oct 17 2020 → Oct 20 2020 |
Publication series
| Name | Composites and Advanced Materials Expo, CAMX 2022 |
|---|
Conference
| Conference | 2022 Annual Composites and Advanced Materials Expo, CAMX 2022 |
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| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | Anaheim |
| Period | 10/17/20 → 10/20/20 |
Funding
Research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. Large scale AM machine used in this research was sponsored by Cincinnati Inc., OH, USA. Feedstock materials used in this work were provided by Techmer PM., TN, USA. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).
Keywords
- Additive Manufacturing
- Light Weighting
- Multi-Material
- Printed Foams