Influence of Textile Substrates on the Adhesion of PJM-Printed MED610 and Surface Morphology

Abstract

The idea of 3D printing on textile fabrics was first mentioned around 10 years ago and has been investigated in detail since. Originally aimed at opening new design possibilities, combining 3D printing with textile substrates has shifted towards a new method to prepare composites with defined mechanical and other physical properties. The main problem of fused deposition modelling (FDM; also referred to as material extrusion (MEX) according to ISO/ASTM 52900) is printing on textile fabrics, where the frequently insufficient adhesion between both materials has not been fully resolved. For this reason, a few attempts have been made to combine other additive manufacturing methods with textile fabrics. While the principle possibility of using stereolithography (SLA) on textile fabrics was demonstrated a few years ago, PolyJet modelling (PJM) has only recently proven to be applicable for direct printing on textile materials. Here, we present the first study of printing MED610 medical resin on different fabrics. We show that a higher textile fabric surface roughness generally increases the adhesion of the printed material, while a higher hydrophobicity is disadvantageous. We also tested the influence of textile substrates on the porosity of the MED610 surface, as this parameter can influence a material’s potential use in tissue engineering and other biomedical applications.

Keywords

• material extrusion
• MEX
• adhesion
• fused deposition modelling
• FDM