| dc.description.abstract | Polymer 3D printing has become an emerging manufacturing technique, due to its design flexibility, however its application to produce structural components is still limited due to the poor mechanical strength and thermal stability of most 3D printed parts. Because of the superior mechanical strength of carbon fiber, 3D printing of continuous carbon fiber reinforced thermoset composites have recently been studied overcome this barrier of mechanical strength and thermal stability. Light- curing based 3D printing of continuous carbon fiber shows a promising potential, however this process also has limitations in making custom object due to fiber loop creation as the nozzle turns at the corner of the object. This study aimed to develop algorithms for light-assisted 3D printing, focusing on custom object fabrication using low-viscosity urethane acrylate and epoxy-acrylate based resins. A novel approach, laser cutting incorporated 3D printing of continuous carbon fiber reinforced thermoset composites, is presented for custom object manufacturing. Furthermore, algorithms were developed to enable the printing of various shapes, including rectangles, triangles, circles, hexagons, and grid structures. A modified algorithm was also introduced and demonstrated to simplify the printing of scalable truss structures. These proposed 3D printing technologies successfully demonstrated the manufacturing of custom objects having comparable mechanical and thermal strength with similar composites manufactured by conventional manufacturing process. Finally, this study presents an experimental approach to determine the minimum light energy required to sustain continuous fiber printing. Proper tuning of the process parameter of this proposed 3D printing technique has great potential to replace conventional manufacturing process of composites by 3D printing. | en_US |
