A Study on Polyamide-6 Sintering and Effect by $CO_2$ Laser

$CO_2$ Laser에 의한 Polyamide-6 소결과 그 영향에 관한 연구

In the solid freeform fabrication (SFF) system using selective laser sintering (SLS), polyamide-12 powder is currently recognized as general material. In this study, some kinds of polyamide-6 powders with different shape and particlesize were fabricated to investigate the formability, the microstructure and mechanical properties. Also, to develop a more elaborate and rapid system, this study employs a new SLS device with a 3-axis dynamic focusing scanner system instead of the existing fe lens used in commercial SLS. Polyamide-6 powders having the average size of 100 m were treated thermally in order to keep the spherical symmetry in shape. These polyamide-6 powders were mixed with polyamide-12 powders having the average size of 50 m to give the bimodal distribution of size. These mixed powders showed the better fabrication in the selective laser sintering process because the smaller particles of polyamide-11 played an important role in the compact packing of powders by filling the void space between the large particles of polyamide-6. Also, Experiments have performed to evaluate the effect of a scanning path and sintering parameters by fabricating the various 3D objects.