The SKZ and the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied Materials Research IFAM are jointly developing and investigating reactive epoxy resin filaments in the "Reactive Printing" research project. The project is currently being supported by 25 companies.
Advantages of the new filaments
Latent reactive filaments based on epoxy resin are being developed as part of the project. These enable processing at lower temperatures and cross-link during the printing process to form thermoset components. Due to comparable mechanical properties, they can replace high-temperature thermoplastics. The most important advantages of epoxy resin-based filaments are - Improved layer adhesion: reduced anisotropic material properties for more homogeneous components. - Lower processing temperatures: No need for high performance thermoplastics. - Access to thermoset fiber composite components in the FFF printing process. - Hybrid components can be realized: Material-locking connections can be printed directly onto existing building structures made of different materials.
The path to the solution
The resin formulation, accompanying material characterization and production of the filaments initially take place on a laboratory scale. An FFF printer will be set up for the tests, which will be used to characterize the printing properties and print test components. After the project, it will be available as a demonstrator. Upscaling is also planned by setting up a demonstrator system. In addition, numerical calculations on the melting and discharge behaviour of cross-linkable moulding compounds and the characterization of component properties will be carried out. At the end of the project, the process chain will be evaluated on practical components.