Quality Investigation of 3D Printer Filament Using Laboratory X-Ray Tomography

Consumer 3D printers produce varying qualities of prints due to various factors such as nozzle temperature, layer thickness, line spacing, among others. Until now, very little attention has been given to the filament quality and how this could affect the print quality. In this work, the effect of filament quality on the final build quality was investigated, with a range of different filaments on the same printer. The results indicate that, although the filaments vary significantly in terms of porosity and inclusions, the prints are reasonably unaffected by these factors and dimensionally very accurate. This indicates that filament quality is not of major concern for consumer-level 3D printing. However, the presence of large inclusions could lead to nozzle blockages (and failed prints), and the presence of porosity will lead to weaker parts, which is of interest for more advanced applications.