Plastic droplet welding: bond strength between plastic freeforming structures and continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites

Plastic freeforming (PF) is an additive-manufacturing process for producing three-dimensional plastic parts based on 3D CAD data by applying plastic droplets in layers. This process is used to produce customer-specific and complex geometries (prototypes and small series) on organic sheets. A comparable serial process is the injection of a second component onto organic sheets by injection molding. A sufficient bond between the PF structure and the organic sheets is of particular importance for each application. If this is not guaranteed, the composite system cannot withstand the mechanical load and fails. The force exerted on the system can no longer be transmitted between the PF structure and the organic sheet. The organic sheet is made of glass fiber-reinforced polypropylene (PP). The connection between the organic sheet and the PF structure is achieved by welding the molten polymer droplets and the surface of the organic sheet. The PF structures are made of PP to ensure sufficient compatibility with regard to the weldability of the components. The processing of PP in the PF process is a challenge because PP is a semi-crystalline material. The shrinkage of semi-crystalline materials is significantly higher compared to amorphous materials. Due to the layered structure of the components, the shrinkage of the individual layers results in undesired warpage. The adhesive strength between the organic sheet and the PF structure is investigated by determining the bending strength in the 3-point bending test. The investigations include an optimization of the process parameters to maximize the adhesive strength. The experimental investigations show that an increase of the nozzle and build chamber temperature leads to a higher adhesive strength. In further investigations, the temperature of the nozzle shows no significant influence on the surface temperature despite the expected heat radiation. The surface temperature is almost only dependent on the temperature of the build chamber.