An investigation on mechanical properties of 3D pen fused zones for additive manufactured parts

Abstract

Additive manufacturing has been one of the most used techniques in the recent years because of its capabilities to fabricate complex structures as required by customer and industrial need from a 3D computer-aided design model without the usage of any tooling, dies and heavy machinery makes it a step ahead in the present manufacturing techniques. In the current study the author’s focus on the welding or joining of additive manufactured Polylactic acid (PLA) parts made by Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). There are several techniques for welding these additive manufactured parts. This study mainly focuses on the joining of 3D printed PLA parts using a 3D pen and investigations on its mechanical properties experimentally. It is a very cheap and effective technique when compared to the other welding methods. This could overcome the drawback of small bed size in most 3D printers by joining smaller parts and it can also be used for repairing the defects caused during the 3D printing. Moreover the experimental testing of the mechanical properties also confirmed that the tensile, flexural and impact strength of 3D pen welded specimens retrieved above 70% of the strength to the original PLA specimen proving it to be a very effective method.