Investigating the Effect of Extruder Temperature and Filament Collection Speed on the Impregnation Quality of PLA Filament Reinforced with Continuous Carbon Fibers

Abstract

The fused deposition modeling (FDM) is an emerging technology for producing parts with high flexibility in design. Considering the low strength of the parts produced with PLA filament, the use of composites reinforced with continuous carbon fibers can solve this defect and increase the mechanical characteristics of the above produced parts. Therefore, an attempt has been made to design and build a prototype of a filament machine with the ability to produce continuous fiber filament with the structure of polymer filament (PLA) and carbon fiber reinforcement. In order to optimally use the produced product (carbon filament-PLA), the experimental effect of the melting temperature of the polymer filament and also the filament collection speed on the surface shear resistance of the product produced by this device was investigated. In this research, factors such as fiber surface roughness, the degree of impregnation between fibers and matrix, the influence of the temperature of the impregnation unit, and the speed of filament exit from the machine have been investigated and evaluated. The results of investigations carried out by electron microscope images on the samples have confirmed the relative increase in fiber surface roughness in the fiber preparation stage using acetic acid and the high quality of carbon fiber impregnation by PLA melt. Also, by using Taguchi's experimental design, filaments were produced and then the produced samples were evaluated in the laboratory. By examining the experimental results, among the conditions considered by Taguchi method, the best melting temperature is 190 C˚ and the best collection speed is 1 rpm.

Keywords

• composite
• extruder temperature
• interfacial shear strength
• filament collection speed
• composite continuous fibers