ELASTOMERS AND PLASTICS Additive Manufacturing of Rub ber Parts based on low viscous Compounds using a Direct-Ink Writing Process

This paper deals with investigations in to the additive manufacturing of an EP DM-based high-viscosity sulfur-curable rubber compound. In order to make the compound processible using „Direct Ink-Writing“, different solvent concent rations are used to reduce the com pound viscosity to the limited process window. For 3D-printing process variab le process parameters are used to opti mize the quality of the rubber part, which is controlled by laser confocal microscope, 3D-μ-CT and physical pro perties. In addition, the effect of residu al solvent in the polymer, respectively in the semi-finished product, affect the possible volume shrinkage caused by evaporation processes of the printed part during vulcanization. 

Due to the variety of available materials (e.g. metals, ceramics, thermoplastics or even thermoplastic elastomers), additive manufacturing (AM) processes are men tioned as a future-oriented technology for realizing intelligent function-integra ted components and parts with geomet ries which were previously inaccessible. Since 2014, this market is grown by ap proximately 25 % per year and is current ly estimated to have a market capitaliza tion of $12.1 billion [1].