Experimental investigation of mechanical and microscopic properties of ABS-Ni composite made by Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) method

The development of additive manufacturing processes in the last several decades has made the manufacture of parts made of various materials quite significant. Fused deposition modeling, being one of the most widely used additive manufacturing processes, enables the creation of complex composite parts. In this technique, the material comes out of the system's nozzle in the direction of the system's movement due to the melting of the filament in the nozzle and its momentary progress. Because of their numerous applications, micro-composite materials are considered one of these materials. However, the technique of manufacturing the composite has an influence on the behavior of the component; for this purpose, in this research, ABS-Ni micro composite filament was employed and printed with the FDM 3D printer developed by the researchers of this article, and it was compared to other polymers such as PLA, ABS, and TPU. The mechanical and microscopic behavior of the polymers made with this approach, have been investigated. Furthermore, similar parts manufactured using the DLP approach were compared to this method. According to the results, a 15% increase in nickel powder reduced tensile strength by 11.62%, which is equivalent to a 50% drop in the volume of infill in the non-composite ABS part. When comparing the FDM and DLP methods, the photopolymerization operation can diminish the strength of the products by 2 times despite the higher surface quality and more integrated structure. The elongation of TPU polymers was determined to be 26 times higher than that of other polymers.