High Pressure Autoclave for Additive Manufacturing

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It is intended to perform additive manufacturing of plastic parts by means of a FDM-printer (FDM - Fused Deposition Modeling) under significantly increased ambient pressure to manufacture parts with mechanical properties comparable to those of injection moulded parts. Currently, the mechanical properties of printed parts are in the region of just 50% of the injection moulded ones. This is due to a lack of shear during the print process, an insufficient preheating of already printed filaments, and of course of a substantially lower process pressure. The first two factors will be surveyed in a ZIM-project and are already part of current research. Raising the ambient pressure during 3D-printing is a completely new approach which has not been mentioned in scientific publications yet. To perform this process, a conventional FDM-printer shall be placed in an autoclave. The printing shall be done under a pressure up to 120 bar. The high pressure autoclave is necessary to develop the printing process (e.g. modifications of the 3d-printer) and the determination of the processing window.