Investigating FDM 3D Printed Thermoplastic-Bonded Magnetic Composite Materials https://ift.tt/2zHxM5D While magnetic materials are pretty important when it comes to creating and implementing novel technologies, like 3D printing, it’s not easy to integrate or tune them in complicated designs, because of constraints in conventional manufacturing methods. A team of researchers from ETH Zurich, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and ETH Zurich spin-off company Magnes AG published a paper, titled “3D Printing of Thermoplastic-bonded Soft-and Hard-Magnetic Composites: Magnetically Tuneable Architectures and Functional Devices,” that explains their investigation into creating polymer composites – using a customized FDM 3D printer – that possess magnetic properties and tailored geometries.
By using 3D printing, it’s possible to make high-performance, composite magnets that are patterned in “arbitrary shapes and architectures” and made specifically for certain applications, which helps keep costs down.
The team created and tested a total of three TBMC filaments, each with a different magnetic property. The next step was showing how the feedstock magnetic materials’ specific properties were preserved in the final structure, and then the researchers explained how to adjust its magnetic behavior by using a double nozzle setup to 3D print parts with varying “magnetic attributes.”
MREs, which position and control the motion of industrial robotic tools, are made up of a magnetic ring, or disc, where “a magnetic pattern of alternating poles is written.” Additional sensor components aren’t necessary when the magnetic material is 3D printed directly onto the rotary shaft, and more materials can be used. The researchers used three commercially available polyamide (PA)-based magnetic composite pellets for their experiments, and optimized the extrusion parameters when producing each one: Nd2Fe14B (NFB/PA12), Fe6.72Si1.27Al (FSA)/PA12, and SrFe12O19/PA12 (SFO/PA12). The composites, and the final structures, were tested for features like surface morphology, magnetic properties, adhesion, and thermal energy, among others.
Using this approach, the team 3D printed a disc with a soft-magnetic TBMC top layer and hard-magnetic TBMC bottom layer, and a crisscross patterned cuboid with alternating hard-magnetic and soft-magnetic TBMC stripes.
A dual nozzle extruder also makes it possible to 3D print self-contained mechanisms, with several moving parts, without having to assemble them separately – a major application in the field of gear technology. The researchers used their custom 3D printer to fabricate a magnetic gear system out of both magnetic and nonmagnetic material. They performed Finite Element Method simulations on the system in order to analyze its magnetization behavior.
Because 3D printing offers such high complexity, the researchers were able to achieve multiple TBMC complex shapes and tunable customized magnetic properties. Their work showed that their TBMC materials can transfer magnetic properties to the 3D printed structure without any deterioration.
Co-authors of the paper were George Chatzipirpiridis, Simone Gervasoni, Cedric Fischer, Olgaç Ergeneman, Eva M. Pellicer, Bradley J. Nelson, and Salvador Pané. Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 30, 2019 at 01:27AM
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