Desenvolvimento de um cabeçote de extrusão por êmbolo para polipropileno granulado visando a manufatura aditiva

Abstract

One of the most popular additive manufacturing processes is based on fuseddeposition of the material. The principleapplied to these machines makes difficult to find suppliers of raw materials, especially in brazilian market, and narrow the variety of materials applicable. The development of equipment able to process the material in the granular form will contribute to the process popularization and extension of available material to be used. This work describes the development of an extrusion head capable to process polypropylene granules and extrudeit as continuous and controlled filament. The extrusion head was designed in order to minimize the volume of material to be fused and reduce the effect of material degradation. Experiments were conducted to characterize the dimensional behavior of the filaments generated and thus allow its better control. The material degradation inside the extrusion head was assessed by infrared spectroscopyand its negative effects over filaments strength by tensile tests.The results of the extrusion experiments showed that the filaments have flow variation along the extruded length, following an increasing curve until a value where its average stabilizes. Spectroscopy showed that degradation occurs inside the heated cylinder, but its negative effects on material strength are less intense when using the designed extrusion head. It was concluded that the extrusion plunger principle with granulated feeding is viable for Additive Manufacturing, requiring, however, better control mechanisms of the extrusion to enable the manufacture of uniform and cohesive parts.