Compressive and flexural properties of PP specimens manufactured by FDM

Resumen

Additive manufacturing (AM), commonly known as three-dimensional (3D) printing, refers to a methodof fabrication that builds components layer by layer. AM technologies have expanded rapidly during thelast years, constituting an alternative to traditional manufacturing in the production of prototypes andfinal products [1]. Among AM technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM) [2] is one of the mostpopular due to its simplicity, minimal wastage of raw material and the ability to process pieces withcomplex geometries.Nowadays, there is a wide variety of common thermoplastic polymers employed in FDM, such asacrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polylactic acid (PLA), polyamide (PA) and polycarbonate (PC).Other polymers as polyethylene (PE) or polypropylene (PP) are rarely applied due to its severe shrinkageand warpage during the manufacturing. However, because of PP is actually one of the most usedcommercial thermoplastics in industry, it could be considered as an interesting potential candidate forFDM.Although PP is very extended in many industrial fields, there is still a lack of knowledge about its behaviorand mechanical properties after FDM processing. Only a few papers have been published about PPspecimens fabricated by FDM, which are mainly focused on the study of the tensile properties. For thisreason, this work is centered on the research of the compressive and flexural properties. In this sense,compression and three-point bending strength tests are carried out, in an electro-mechanical universaltesting machine, with the aim to obtain and study its main mechanical magnitudes.