FFF is one of the most popular techniques in 3D printing due to its relatively low cost and high prototyping speed, but the quality of the printed parts usually lacks the isotropic toughness and reliability of injection or compression molded parts due to the poor interlayer adhesion between printed filaments. FFF printing also requires melt-processable thermoplastic materials, which often leads to poor mechanical properties in the printed parts. Crosslinked polymers, also called thermosets, generally have better thermal stability, chemical resistance and mechanical properties than thermoplastics. These qualities make thermosets desirable for many engineering applications, and will efficiently improve the interlayer adhesion if crosslinks can be introduced between layers of 3D printed parts. Dynamic covalent chemistry, specifically the furan-maleimide Diels-Alder (fmDA) chemistry, has been applied to many types of smart materials, such as self-healing materials,  recyclable thermosets and others. It also has great potentials in the 3D printing applications, due to its reversibility making thermoset polymers melt-processable in a mild heating environment.<br/>In this presentation, we will be discussing our work on developing a new printing technology based on the FFF printing, Diels-Alder Rapid Extrusion (DARE) 3D printing, dedicated for reversibly crosslinked polymers, which show smoother surface finish, low anisotropy and reasonable toughness in the 3D printed parts while maintaining a great melt-processability.

Diels-Alder rapid extrusion 3D printing of melt-processable thermoset polymers

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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