The Influence of Cardboard Dust on Structural, Morphological and Mechanical Properties of Biocomposite PLA and HDPE Filaments for 3D Printing

In the material extrusion of the thermoplastic filaments, known as Fused Deposition Modelling, usually, pure thermoplastic polymers are used. Recently, the focus of the research is given to the development of new biocomposite thermoplastic materials. In our research, 3D printable biocomposite filaments, made with the addition of 50 wt.% of cardboard dust to the HDPE and PLA polymer matrix were studied. The influence of the added cardboard dust on structural, morphological and mechanical properties of the 3D printable biocomposite filaments was investigated. With the addition of the corrugated cardboard dust into the HDPE and PLA polymer matrix the changes in density, uniformity, chemical structure and transition temperatures of the samples were detected. The addition of the cardboard dust into the HDPE polymer matrix lead to low tenacity, toughness, deformability resulting in brittleness of the 3D printable biocomposite filament, whereas the addition of the cardboard dust into the PLA polymer matrix lowered tensile properties, but didn't affected bending toughness and has even improved compression strength of the 3D printable filament.