Compressive test Fractured Surface analysis on PLA-Cu composite filament printed at different FDM conditions

Abstract Additive manufacturing technology has found its development in the various emerging engineering fields. Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) had proven to be a suitable built-up technique for any complicated and instant shapes. Owing to the advantage of additive manufacturing and emerging industrial needs, the 3D composite filament has been used as a competitive material over the available materials. Commercially available Poly Lactic Acid (PLA), ABS filaments have been widely used in FDM. In the present work, copper particles of mesh size mesh 20-30 micrometers are taken as the reinforcement in the PLA matrix. After primary investigation, 12% of copper particles are found to be a suitable weight percentage in the PLA matrix. The suitable proportional mixture is ball milled for 2 hours, melted to 120oC, and then hot extruded to get a filament diameter of 1 mm. The newly fabricated 3D composite filament is printed at different FDM conditions for the compression test to the ASTM D695-15 standard. The printed samples are subjected to a compression test until failure. Failure mechanism happened on different condition printed samples are examined through scanning electron microscope (SEM) examination. The compression effect causes the squeezing and slippery action of copper particles inside the structure leads to having a displacement of particles.