Short fiber reinforced composites for fused deposition modeling

Addressed in this paper are critical material property issues related to th e short fiber reinforced composite used in rapid prototyping and manufactur ing (RP&M). Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) copolymer has been a popu lar choice of material used in fused deposition modeling (FDM), a commonly used RP&M process. However, conventional ABS polymers in the filamentary fo rm for FDM are known to be of low strength and hardness. In order to overco me this deficiency. ABS was modified by incorporating several different pro perty modifiers including the short glass fiber, plasticizer. and compatibi lizer. Glass fibers were found to significantly improve the strength of an ABS filament at the expense of reduced flexibility and handleability. The l atter two properties of glass Aber reinforced ABS filaments were improved b y adding a small amount of plasticizer and compatibilizer. The resulting co mposite filament. prepared by extrusion, was found to work well with a FDM machine. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.