Analysis Of Melting Behavior Of Bio-Polymers in Additive Manufacturing Analysis of Melting Behavior of Bio-Polymers in Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Additive manufacturing or 3D-printing is used in prototyping, manufacturing, even becoming popular in the arts and jewelry. In FDM product manufacturing by deposition or binding of material layer-by-layer. The print quality of the produced part in terms of the surface finish and strength mainly depends on the temperature of the printer head and the viscosity of the molten polymer used as the filament material and also speed of the printing head. In this work, we used the PEEK (Polyetheretherketone), a polymer, and PVA (Polyvinyl alcohol) as a filament material in FDM Process. It is a thermoplastic polymer with excellent biocompatibility and excellent mechanical properties than any other polymers. Due to its higher bio-compatibility, 3D-printing using FDM is making progress in the high precision PEEK & PVA implants, which cannot be manufacture using other technologies. For this precision work, we required to accurate prediction of heat or mass transfer analysis. But the melting of the polymer is a complex phenomenon because it changes with the change in material property and the process parameters. The present numerical study predicts the behavior of molten polymer or melts profile by evaluating the temperature and pressure profile inside the flow channel of the FDM printing head by varying the heated temperature of the printing head, printing speed. So, ensuring the proper melting of the polymer once it reaches the outlet of the nozzle, which can directly affect the surface finish and bond strength of the produced parts. Also, we perform the experiment based on the FEA result for the verification and validation