Effect of wood flour content on surface properties of 3D printed materials produced from wood flour/PLA filament

Abstract

Amount of wood flour was gradually increased from 0 to 50 wt% in the production of polylactic acid (PLA) based filaments with 1.75 mm diameter using twin screw extruder. Surface roughness and wettability were measured of the specimens. Surface roughness of the specimens significantly increased with incorporation of wood flour into PLA filament. Wettability of the specimens significantly decreased with increasing wood flour content. This was mainly attributed to the higher surface free energy of PLA than the beech wood. Contact angle values of the 3D printed wood/PLA specimens having wood flour content up to 30 wt% were less than 90°.

Keywords:

• Three dimensional (3D) printer
• wood flour
• polylactic acid (PLA)
• surface roughness
• wettability

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Faculty of Polymer Technology FTPO Slovenj Gradec Research Fund of Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa for the equipments of surface roughness and wettability measurements. Project No: BYP-2018-31298. The authors would like to thank Lovro Robič for help in producing filaments.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by Slovenian Research Agency (P4-0015) for financial support.