New welding method strengthens 3D printed parts
From aerospace and defence to digital dentistry and medical devices, 3D printed parts are used in a variety of industries. Currently, 3D printed parts are very fragile and only used in the prototyping phase of materials or as a toy for display.
A doctoral student in the department of materials science and engineering at Texas A&M University has pioneered a countermeasure to transform the landscape of 3D printing today.
Brandon Sweeney and his advisor Dr Micah Green discovered a way to make 3D printed parts stronger and immediately useful in real-world applications. Sweeney and Green applied the traditional welding concepts to bond the submillimeter layers in a 3D printed part together, while in a microwave.
The team recently published their work in the journal Science Advances.
“I was able to see the amazing potential of the technology, such as the way it sped up our manufacturing times and enabled our CAD designs to come to life in a matter of hours,” Sweeney said. “Unfortunately, we always knew those parts were not really strong enough to survive in a real-world application.”
3D printed objects are comprised of many thin layers of materials, plastics, in this case, deposited on top of each other to form a desired shape. These layers are prone to fracturing, causing issues with the durability and reliability of the part when used in a real-world application, for example, a custom printed medical device.
“I knew that nearly the entire industry was facing this problem,” Sweeney said. “Currently, prototype parts can be 3D printed to see if something will fit in a certain design, but they cannot actually be used for a purpose beyond that.”
Green had been collaborating with Dr Mohammad Saed, assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at Texas Tech, on a project to detect carbon nanotubes using microwaves. The trio crafted an idea to use carbon nanotubes in 3D printed parts, coupled with microwave energy to weld the layers of parts together.