FFF 3D Printing of Small Porous Structures from Polymer Compounds Using the Ultimaker 3

Additive manufacturing offers a great potential for the production of objects with a tailor-made inner structure especially in combination with material development in the field of polymer compounds. However, the design possibilities for the inner structure depend on printing resolution, accuracy, and reproducibility. The quality of small filigree objects printed by additive manufacturing processes for polymer materials like fused filament fabrication (FFF) depends on the polymer material itself as well as on the processing parameters in the additive manufacturing technology used. Here, the production of small porous structures by FFF with an Ultimaker 3 is analyzed using polylactic acid (PLA) as well as polymer compounds of PLA containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) containing titanium dioxide (TiO2). The influences of the calibration of the building plate, the heights of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd layers, and of particulate additives on the printing behavior of the polymer compound, and hence the resulting accuracy of the width of single printed lines, are studied. Additionally, the printing of lattice-like scaffold structures using PLA/CNT forming the structure and PVA/TiO2 as soluble support structure is described.