Product Code: ICAL06_1807

Development of Polyamide-6 Powders and Its Effect on the Fabrication by Selective Laser Sintering Process
Authors:
Dong Soo Kim, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials; Daejeon Korea
Chung Hwan Kim, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials; Daejeon Korea
Hyung Il Kim, Chungnam National University; Daejeon Korea
Sung Woo Bae, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials; Daejeon Korea
Young Jin Ahn, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials; Daejeon Korea
Presented at ICALEO 2006

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 particle size 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 f 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.