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Study in performance and morphology of polyamide 12 produced by selective laser sintering technology

Junjie Wu (State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, College of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China)
Xiang Xu (State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, College of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China)
Zhihao Zhao (State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, College of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China)
Minjie Wang (Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education for Precision and Nontraditional Machining, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China)
Jie Zhang (State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, College of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China)

Rapid Prototyping Journal

ISSN: 1355-2546

Article publication date: 27 June 2018

Issue publication date: 20 September 2018

663

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of selective laser sintering (SLS) method on morphology and performance of polyamide 12.

Design/methodology/approach

Crystallization behavior is critical to the properties of semi-crystalline polymers. The crystallization condition of SLS process is much different from others. The morphology of polyamide 12 produced by SLS technology was investigated using scanning electron microscopy, polarized light microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction and wide-angle X-ray diffraction.

Findings

Too low fill laser power brought about bad fusion of powders, while too high energy input resulted in bad performance due to chain scission of macromolecules. There were three types of crystal in the raw powder material, denoted as overgrowth crystal, ring-banded spherulite and normal spherulite.

Originality/value

In this work, SLS samples with different sintering parameters, as well as compression molding sample for the purpose of comparison, were made to study the morphology and crystal structure of sintered PA12 in detail.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank National Natural Science Foundation of China (51433006), Sichuan science and technology plan project (2017JY0069) and The open project of Key Laboratory for Precision and Non-Traditional Machining Technology, Dalian University of Technology (JMTZ201702) for financial support. They are indebted to Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) in Shanghai, China for WAXD experiments.

Citation

Wu, J., Xu, X., Zhao, Z., Wang, M. and Zhang, J. (2018), "Study in performance and morphology of polyamide 12 produced by selective laser sintering technology", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 813-820. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-01-2017-0010

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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