Abstract:
In recent years developments in additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, have resulted in the increased use of this technology in many sectors, mainly in medicine, engineering and education. Nowadays, 3D printing is evolving from a pure rapid prototyping technique to functional manufacturing. However, industrial applications are limited since polymer products built by 3D printing lack good mechanical properties. The main objective of this study is to develop a reactive compounded polylactic acid (PLA) as an alternative to standard PLA strand, but with improved impact strength and elongation at break properties for the Fused Deposition method (FDM) of 3D printing. PLA is one of the most common used thermoplastics in biomedical fields and packaging application. It is a biodegradable polymer with excellent mechanical properties, thus it is considered as a potential replacement for traditional petroleum-based thermoplastics. In this study, the mechanical and thermal properties of modified PLA blends are examined. These are prepared using crosslinking techniques between PLA, elastomeric ethylene-butyl acrylate-glycidyl methacrylate terpolymer (EBA-GMA), the zinc ionomer of the ethylene-methacrylicacid copolymer (EMMA-Zn) and high molecular weight polyesters (PBAT, PBSA, Hytrel). The mechanical properties and crystallisation behaviour of compatibilized PLA blends were found to be considerably different from those of pure PLA. The impact strength of 3D printed samples of PLA/GMA/EMAA blends with 40 wt% Hytrel and PBAT were seven times more than that of pure PLA samples. The elongation at break of 3D printed samples prepared by using reactive blends having PBAT 40% was improved 40 times compared with neat PLA.
