FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF SUSTAINABLE COMPOSITE FILAMENT FOR 3D PRINTING FROM A PLA MATRIX REINFORCED WITH WOOD FIBER RESIDUES

Abstract

Technological processes of additive manufacturing, such as 3D printing, allowed to transcend the limits of the development of current products at a lower cost in a faster way. In recent years, 3D printing has become easier to use and cheaper, making it accessible to different markets. The literature has shown that there is a great demand to design more sustainable materials for the manufacture of consumer goods by 3D printing, which includes, for example, the use of industrial process residues from the furniture industry as powders and sawdust incorporated into polymer matrices. In this work, the combination of PLA with wood dust residues was used in order to create a wood-like filament, with better mechanical properties than the filament without the addition of the load and thus more sustainable. For this, the characterization of the wood powder was done first to determine the best process parameters and then three different and extruded formulations were determined for the production of the filaments. At the end, they were analyzed for their properties of interest.