Mechanical and thermal properties of ABS/iron composite for fused deposition modeling.

Fused deposition modeling is one of the most popular methods of additive manufacturing (AM). Typically, the thermoplastic polymer in the form of filament is melted in extrusion head and deposited layer by layer to fabricate object directly from 3D model data. Nowadays, FDM technology is also used to fabricate much more complex elements, like structural electronics or 3D printed electronics. Due to that, there is a necessity to develop new composite materials for this technology. In this work, an acrylonitrile butadiene styrene(ABS)/iron powder composite filament for use in 3D printing was fabricated by a two-stage solvent assisted processing method. Homogenously distributed iron powder in filaments with a filler content of 30 and 50 vol %, were fabricated using a single screw extruder machine. A static tensile test was carried out on samples printed from the developed composite materials. To demonstrate the thermal performance of 3D printed elements made with developed composites, exemplary heatsinks were printed. To exposed differences in thermal conductivity depending on iron powder contain, infrared thermography of printed objects was used. The results obtained were compared with the results for pure ABS prints. The research has shown that increasing filler content in composite filament decreases maximum engineering stress of materials but at the same time increase its thermal conductivity. Developed composites can be used to 3D print complicated and complex shaped heatsinks to improve thermal properties of 3D printed electronic circuits and objects.