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ABSTRACT
Thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) are applied polymeric materials having distinctive rubber-like elasticity and flexibility along with thermoplastic-like processability. However, manufacturing of TPE products using filament-based material extrusion additive manufacturing technique is challenging mainly due to their weak column strength, high melt viscosity, poor layer coalescence, and warpage. In this work, a material extrusion additive manufacturing technique based on polymer inks as feedstock was employed to develop a tailorable additive manufactured TPE material from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)/epichlorohydrin-ethylene oxide-allyl glycidyl ether (GECO) rubber blend. Hansen solubility parameter analysis was employed to investigate the suitable inks for the material extrusion process. Viscoelastic properties such as shear viscosity, elastic modulus, and die-swell ratio were exploited to understand the printability and layer formability. The dimensional accuracy of fabricated parts was evaluated based on the shrinkage studies. Shrinkage was higher in case the of DMF due to a higher boiling point (~153°C) i.e., ~33% as compared to THF (~66°C) i.e., ~18%. It was revealed that additive-manufactured TPU/GECO blend showed excellent thermoplastic elastomeric properties, i.e., absence of yield point in the stress-strain plot and tension set less than ~12%. This work provides a directional approach to develop additivemanufactured soft TPEs to enrich their design flexibility for several potential applications.
Acknowledgments
Shib Shankar Banerjee acknowledges financial support from the Science and Engineering Research Board - Start-up Research Grant (SERB-SRG), India, vide research grant no. RP04369G.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Authors Contribution
Pratiksha Awasthi: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Investigation.
Arun Kumar: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Investigation.
Pulak Mohan Pandey: Conceptualization, review & editing.
Shib Shankar Banerjee: Conceptualization, Project administration, Resources, review & editing.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Pratiksha Awasthi
Pratiksha Awasthi is a research scholar in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, working in the area of additive manufacturing of thermoplastic elastomers and elastomeric materials.
Arun Kumar
Arun Kumar is a research scholar in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, working in the area of additive manufacturing of thermoplastic elastomers.
Pulak Mohan Pandey
Pulak Mohan Pandey is currently Professor (HAG) in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. Dr Pandey has a prolific research profile in the field of rapid prototyping and tooling, reverse engineering, material development, non-traditional machining and finishing, and biomedical applications of 3D printing. He has approximately 230 international journal papers and 53 international/national refereed conference papers to his credit. He has filed around 24 Indian Patent applications. He is the recipient of multiple Gandhiyan Young Technological Innovation Awards and an outstanding research award by the Additive Manufacturing Society of India.
Shib Shankar Banerjee
Shib Shankar Banerjee is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at IIT Delhi, India. He has more than 56 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and about 37 contributions in conferences. His research is focused on 3D printing of functional polymeric/elastomeric materials, process-controlled structure development in multiphase polymeric systems and multifunctional soft materials for soft robotics application.