Additive manufacturing of pressure resistant vessels for underwater environmental monitoring – Investigation of printing parameters in fused filament fabrication

In this study, pressure resistance and water retention properties of a object mimicking an underwater monitoring vessel printed by fused filament fab-rication were investigated to determine the influence of crucial printing pa-rameters and to optimize them for the desired pressure resistance properties. In addition, different materials were tested for their suitability and printing behaviour for the envisaged application.
The printing results showed that the orientation on the print bed and there-fore the orientation of layers has a major influence on surface quality and the pressure resistance of the printed object. While a horizontal orientation caused a number of defects with specific material, a vertical orientation produced better results in all cases. It could also be established that there is a major difference between the materials used, both in the final print quality as well as in the pressure tightness during the test carried out. Concerning the evaluated printing parameters it could be found that the wall thickness or number of perimeters as well as the extrusion factor were the most influ-ential individual print setting to influence the pressure resistance. ... mehrFinally, the best combination of material, print orientation and printing parameters were able to withstand an internal of up to 7.8 bar, maxing out the setup used within the study.