Additive Manufacturing and Characterization of Polyoxymethylene

• Author / Creator

  Tian, Panxi

• Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the most commonly utilized additive manufacturing (AM) technologies around the world. It produces components via depositing materials layer by layer. Compared with traditional manufacturing methods, as well as other additive manufacturing techniques, FDM has received extensive attention because of its high degree of customization and low cost. In addition to the commonly utilized FDM materials, such as polylactic acid (PLA) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a large number of new materials with unique properties became available for FDM technology in recent years .

  Polyoxymethylene (POM) is an engineering thermoplastic that offers low friction and high impact resistance, and commonly used in many industrial applications, such as gear wheels and rifle stocks. It also has high stiffness, excellent wear resistance, and good chemical resistance, etc. However, POM is usually processed by traditional manufacturing methods, such as injection molding (IM) and extrusion. The potential of using POM for parts produced using FDM is extremely important both for industrial applications as well as for niche prototyping needs, but, so far, this has received very limited attention in the open literature.

  The main motivation behind the current thesis is to close this aforementioned gap and to provide a first insight into the thermomechanical and elastic properties of in-house manufactured POM filaments and the use of them in our FDM machine. As such, the influence of infill direction on both elastic and viscoelastic properties, as well as the shear properties, of POM FDM parts were investigated.

  The dimensional accuracy of FDM parts is the one of the key parameters to ensure that the dimensions of the manufactured parts match the design dimensions that leads to a successful production. ANOVA statistical analysis was applied to reveal the relationship between different printing conditions (i.e. the size of the parts and the printing temperature) and the dimensional accuracy. In addition, industrial components are usually of different shapes, so the comparison of dimensional accuracy of different shapes was also studied in this thesis.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • fused deposition modelling
  • polyoxymethylene
  • elasticity and viscoelasticity
  • infill direction
  • extrusion
  • dimensional accuracy

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-k04a-h474

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.