Particle Emissions of Material-Extrusion-Type Desktop 3D Printing: the Effects of Infill

Material-extrusion-type desktop 3D printers are popular nowadays, but there is usually no air quality control in their working environment. Since the printing process involves heating polymers, particle emissions of the particle diameter less than 2.5 mm became an important issue in consideration of “green” additive manufacturing. Besides, infill is commonly used in printing to reduce weight and time, but rare research studies the effects of infill in particle emissions. Hence, in this research, particle emission behaviors with the existence of infill were investigated. The measured particle concentrations of ABS samples showed a peak emission during the 1st top solid layer printing, which was the first layer after infill. Further experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of infill height, infill density, infill pattern, and feed rate of the 1st top solid layer printing. Consequently, less infill height, higher infill density, and slower feed rate would lead to less particle emissions and a smaller peak value. The verification sample with preferred settings has demonstrated 96% improvement of the peak value. In the future practices, particle collecting device can be scheduled only limited to the period of peak emission to save cost and energy.