Experimental investigations for improved modelling of the laser sintering process of polymers

For laser sintering the knowledge about which material properties are important for the process and the product quality is insufficient. This causes significant difficulties in developing new materials. To address this problem, a link between material data, process parameters and component quality is necessary. This link can be achieved by a combination of experimental investigations and theoretical considerations to develop dimensionless characteristic numbers. As a first step to derive such numbers, this paper presents experimental methods to determine temperature development and sintered volume during the sintering process. These methods are used to investigate different process parameter settings during the sintering of polyamide 12. The measurement results are then compared with simulated results.