Polymer selective laser sintering (SLS) is considered one of the most promising technologies in high geometric complexity and customized design products manufacturing. New material development for SLS is mainly based on the trial-and-error method which is extremely time consuming and costly. Being able to screen material with the fundamental polymer characterization data, as well as predict printability and printing parameter range, will enable a faster and more cost-efficient development of the new products. This work provides a new strategy into the prediction of the printing parameters from the energy perspective. Polyamide 12 (PA12) is used as the benchmark material. Energy balance and laser polymer interaction behaviors are integrated into an energy function set. The maximum temperature during printing and the laser parameters can be calculated interchangeably based on this method. As a validation of this method, the maximum temperature of PA12 during printing is calculated and shows good agreement with the IR camera measurement value in literature. This work improves the understanding of SLS and optimizes the new material development process beyond PA12.

Predicting printing parameters in semi-crystalline polymeric materials selective laser sintering

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.