(267d) Development of Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) Printed Multi-Material Parts with Improved Interlayer Bonding

Poor interlayer adhesion remains a crucial problem in Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) resulting in meager mechanical properties in 3D printed parts. In this work, protocols developed in our previous work are extended to study the interlayer adhesion between layers of two or more different resins, and between filled and neat layers of the same resin. Effects of layer thickness, volume composition, filler loading, printing temperature and rate on interlayer adhesion are studied. Printed samples are characterized using traditional ASTM methods and High Throughput Mechanical Analysis (HTMECH). Multi-material bilayer films are also prepared using solvent casting and characterized using the HTMECH to correlate off-printer and on-printer behavior. The HTMECH serves as a rapid testing method for high throughput adhesion screening of multimaterial systems reducing testing time associated with standard ASTM methods.