Comparison and Evaluation of Surface and Mechanical Characteristics of Carbon Fibre PETG with Polylactic Acid and Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene

Additive manufacturing process is a very fast and upcoming field, where the materials used are becoming vastly diverse in the properties and application areas, with the most common materials being Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and Polylactic Acid (PLA) with their unique 3D printing settings and drawbacks. With higher usage of 3D printed parts being used as functional elements, better thermal and mechanical characteristics have become necessary. Carbon fibre is one material that has been known for its mechanical properties. But printing carbon fibre with the conventional printers is very difficult. So, it is either used to reinforce ABS or PLA materials and improve their thermal mechanical and chemical properties. A Carbon Fibre Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol (CF PETG) with a printer, that is designed to print CF PETG, ABS and PLA with similar settings. This study deals with the printing of the test models with the 3D printer and test the print quality for surface measurement, metrological accuracy and bonding quality using microscopy. These results are compared with the same model printed with ABS and PLA.