Additive Manufacturing of Overhang Structures Using Moisture-Cured Silicone with Support Material

Additive manufacturing (AM) of soft materials has a wide variety of applications, such as customized or wearable devices. Silicone is one popular material for these applications given its favorable material properties. However, AM of silicone parts with overhang structures remains challenging due to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing 2018-06, Vol.2 (2), p.24
Main Authors: Muthusamy, Mohan, Safaee, Shahriar, Chen, Roland
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3-D printers
3D printing
Additive manufacturing
Adhesion tests
Adhesive strength
Automation
Construction materials
Design
Elastomers
Finite element method
Material properties
Polyvinyl alcohol
Pressure regulators
Printing
Process parameters
Redevelopment
silicone
Silicones
soft material
support structure
Wearable technology
Weight
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Summary:Additive manufacturing (AM) of soft materials has a wide variety of applications, such as customized or wearable devices. Silicone is one popular material for these applications given its favorable material properties. However, AM of silicone parts with overhang structures remains challenging due to the soft nature of the material. Overhang structures are the areas where there is no underlying structure. Typically, a support material is used and built in the underlying space so that the overhang structures can be built upon it. Currently, there is no support structure that has been used for AM of silicone. The goal of this study is to develop an AM process to fabricate silicone parts with overhang structures. We first identified and confirmed poly-vinyl alcohol (PVA), a water-soluble material, as a suitable support material for silicone by evaluating the adhesion strength between silicone and PVA. Process parameters for the support material, including critical overhang angle and minimum infill density for the support material, are identified. However, overhang angle alone is not the only determining factor for support material. As silicone is a soft material, it deflects due to its own weight when the height of the overhang structure increases. A finite element model is developed to estimate the critical overhang height paired with different overhang angles to determine whether the use of support material is needed. Finally, parts with overhang structures are printed to demonstrate the capability of the developed process.
ISSN:2504-4494
2504-4494
DOI:10.3390/jmmp2020024