Browsing by Subject "3D printers"
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Item Additive Manufacturing Round Robin Protocols: A Pilot Study(University of Texas at Austin, 2015) Moylan, Shawn; Land, Joshua; Possolo, AntonioAs the number of users of additive manufacturing (AM) steadily increases, and considering their demand for material and process specifications, the need for standard protocols for round robin studies is increasing accordingly. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have conducted and participated in several AM round robin studies with the aim not only to characterize the AM process, and material but also to improve the understanding of AM round robin studies themselves. One simple study, a pilot round robin study investigating geometric performance of NIST-owned consumer-grade 3D printers, provides excellent examples of typical results and lessons learned. While individual printers produced relatively consistent results, there was significant variability between the printers. This variability existed despite best efforts to ensure participants followed consistent procedures in building the test parts. Further, the variability made it apparent that collecting pedigree data from each build was required to draw any conclusions about potential causes of the variability.Item Geometric Element Test Targets for Visual Inference of a Printer's Dimension Limitations(University of Texas at Austin, 2015) Chang, S.; Li, H.; Ostrout, N.; Jhuria, M.; Mottal, S.A.; Sigg, F.As technologies advance in the field of additive manufacturing (AM), it increases the demand in using test targets to quantitatively appraise the performance of AM processes and parts. This study presents a unique concept to address the dimensional and geometric viability of threedimensional (3D) printers with test targets that are unique and complementary to those currently available. We have named these distinct designed artifacts as Geometric Element Test Targets (GETTs). The concept for the targets is to rely on positioning and spatial frequency of geometric shapes to induce failures that are indicative of the system’s dimensional limitations. A distinguishing characteristic is that the dimensional failures can be inspected visually. Systematic evaluations of the limitations can be further conducted through contact or non-contact measurements. The initial GETTs include three suites of test targets: line, angular and circular suites. We will illustrate this concept with samples produced with fused deposition modeling printers. The potential applications of GETTs include standardization, reference targets, in-line system control, and more.Item Polymer Recycling and Additive Manufacturing in an Open Source Context: Optimization of Processes and Methods(University of Texas at Austin, 2015) Cruz, Fabio; Lanza, Silvia; Boudaoud, Hakim; Hoppe, Sandrine; Camargo, MauricioPolymer recycling is a way to reduce environmental impacts of accumulation of polymeric waste materials. However, low recycling rates are often observed in conventional centralized recycling plants mainly to the challenge of collection and transportation for high-volume low-weight-polymers in conventional centralized recycling plants. As the democratization of open-source 3D printers is going forward thanks to initiatives such as FabLab environments, there is a growing interest on how to use this technology to improve the efficiency of use of raw materials. Studies have been proposed in order to recycle waste polymer into open-source 3D printer feedstock. The recycling of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) issued from bottles of used milk jugs through use of an open-source filament fabricator system called RecycleBot has been evaluated. In this study, we propose an evaluation of the mechanical recyclability of Polylactic Acid (PLA), material widely used in the open-source 3D printing context, in order to establish the viability of this recycled material to be used in the open-source 3D printers. The degradation of the material’s mechanical and rheological properties after a number of cycles of multiple extrusion and printing processes is evaluated. The characterization of recycled raw materials for open-source 3D printing has implications not only to reduce the environmental impact of polymers waste, but also it will allow us to understand the technical requirements and challenges for development of open-source filament recycle machine/process. The coupling of open-source 3D printers and filament extruders can offer the bases of a new distributed polymer recycling paradigm, which reverses the traditional paradigm of centralizing recycling of polymers where is often uneconomic and energy intensive due to transportation embodied energy. Moreover, this characterization also will allow the exploration of new source of materials and new composite materials for open-source 3D printing, in order to improve the quality of products made by this technology.