Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-27-2024

Abstract

Adhesives and sealants show fine rheology with good physical and mechanical properties as viscous pastes, a possible starting point for developing direct ink writing (DIW) 3D printing ink. However, many commercial adhesives and sealants take days or weeks to cure fully. DIW 3D-printed parts made directly from these sealants are not designed for a scalable manufacturing process and high-volume production. Moreover, most of these adhesives and sealants have volume shrinkage during cure. A systematic understanding of formulation methods and design principles for an elastomeric silicone DIW ink can overcome these issues. This study presents the cogent formulation development of a 3D printable thermoset elastomer silicone that gels and cures isotropically in minutes, reducing cycle time for rapid ink development with no shrinkage during cure. More specifically, we outline the principles of raw material selection of a formulation to achieve excellent rheology, printability, synchronized working, and gel time fitting requirements closer to scalable manufacturing. The reaction kinetics and their corresponding 3D-printed structural properties are also described. Interest in future work is toward a rational DIW 3D printing ink material development protocol and use of machine learning (ML). Highlights: Formulation method flexibility and design principle of DIW ink. Raw material selection principle to achieve optimal rheology for DIW printing. Ink gel kinetics for large-scale DIW manufacturing. Hydrosilylation conversion over time at different ambient temperatures. Structural properties of DIW 3D printed parts.

Keywords

3D printing, adhesives, elastomer, formulation, mechanical testing, polymers

Language

English

Publication Title

Polymer Engineering and Science

Rights

© The Author(s) 2024.This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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