Major Advance in Print Speed & Strengths
07/24/2020
By David Kazmer
Material extrusion is a popular process for both prototyping and digital manufacturing, yet it is lacking in terms of part strength, feature resolution, and production rate relative to alternative processes.
Injection printing addresses these issues by combining material extrusion of the outer surfaces of the part at fine resolution with injection molding of larger interior cavities at high flow rates. Injection printing thus aims to utilize the full melting capacity of material extrusion printers to mitigate the curse of dimensionality that plagues additive manufacturing.
It was found that injection printing increased print speeds by an average factor of 3.2 relative to conventional material extrusion using the same linear print velocities. With respect to properties, the stiffness, strength and strain to failure of injection printed tensile bars (in-plane) were respectively increased by 21%, 47%, and 35% compared to material extrusion.
For more information, see the research on the Science Direct website.
