Influence of Build Height on Quality of Additively Manufactured Thermoplastic Polyurethane Parts

Due to geometrical degrees of freedom, low cost, and ease of realizing complex structures, polymer additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged exceptionally well. Even with rapid evolutionary growth, AM lacks sound quality mainly including inherent porosity and surface roughness compared to their counterparts (conventional manufacturing processes) due to the involvement of several printing parameters in AM processes. This quality-based comparative assessment presents the influence of build/layer height on the porosity (using micro-X-ray computed tomography) and surface roughness (in build direction) of additively manufactured thermoplastic polyurethane (due to its versatile properties in applications like wearable electronics and biomedical) using three different polymer AM processes namely selective laser sintering, fused deposition modeling, and stereolithography. Along with porosity, an in-depth pore characterization is also performed to understand the geometrical feature and severity of pores present in each sample of the AM process. Results are compared finally to make concluding remarks. This study demonstrates the influence of layer height/thickness on quality (porosity and surface roughness in build direction) of the additively manufactured thermoplastic polyurethane of shore hardness 80 A using three different polymer (fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering, and stereolithography) additive manufacturing processes.image (c) 2024 WILEY-VCH GmbH