Equipment for additive manufacturing of biocompatible silicone
AUTHORS AND FULL AFFILIATIONS:
Alessandro Colpani, Antonio Fiorentino, Elisabetta Ceretti
KEYWORDS:
Extrusion, 3D printing, Medical devices, Biomedical Silicones
PURPOSE:
This work focuses on the development of an extrusion based 3D printing process equipment for two-component and biocompatible silicones. The main problem when processing these silicones is the curing time that brings to the full solidification of the polymer. In fact, this material is characterized by a too short curing time (tens of minutes) when compared with the processing time of AM (hours or even days). Therefore the purpose of this work is to present a new technology which can overcome this limitation. The technology is a new extrusion head Abe to extend the processing time of the material.
LIMITATION:
The main problem when processing these silicones is the curing time that brings to the full solidification of the polymer. In fact, this material is characterized by a too short curing time (tens of minutes) when compared with the processing time of AM (hours or even days).
FINDINGS:
dimensioning, design and realization phases of a modular extrusion head are presented. The extrusion head is equipped with a cooling system able to keep the silicone at low temperature in order to slow down the curing kinetics. Furthermore, the results of the testing phase performed to evaluate the behavior and the optimal operating conditions of this equipment are provided.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE:
This work demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed solution in reaching suitable temperatures to extend the time window of AM process for biocompatible silicones. The developed equipment overcomes the main issues related to the biomedical silicones processing with AM, and shows a potential application in customized medical devices production.
FULL REFERENCE:
COLPANI, Alessandro; FIORENTINO, Antonio; CERETTI, Elisabetta. Equipment for additive manufacturing of biocompatible silicone. In: AIP Conference Proceedings. AIP Publishing, 2019. p. 150003.
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