PLA/HA biocomposite filament production for 3d printer applications

Today, with the acceleration of 3D printer technologies, this technology has started to be used in many areas. 3D printers are a printing technology used to bring objects designed in a virtual environment into solid format. Making a prototype of an object scanned with special methods, concretizing a part created with appropriate drawing programs can be achieved with 3D printers. A designed virtual object in 3D; It can be produced by thermal or chemical treatment of materials such as polymer, composite, resin, ceramic, metal. Production using nano-sized metal powder and ceramic powder materials requires much greater technology, equipment and cost, while the cost of plastic-based materials used as filaments is low, the device used for these filaments is partially simple and small in structure, and the usage areas are very wide. In this study, Hydroxyapatite (HA) reinforced biocomposite filaments with Polylactic acid (PLA) matrix were produced in different ratios (pure PLA, PLA/% 5HA, PLA/% 15HA and PLA/% 20HA) using the biopolymer PLA and the bioactive ceramic HA. For homogeneous mixing of PLA and HA, PLA was dissolved in solvent chemical (methylene chloride) and then nHA powders were added and mixed mechanically. After the composite structures produced were dried, they were broken into granules suitable for the extruder machine, and then filaments with a diameter of approximately 1.75 mm were produced by extrusion process. By using the produced filaments, tensile, impact and bioactivity test samples were printed with the help of a three-dimensional printer. Afterwards, tensile test, impact test, bioactivity tests were performed and SEM-EDX analyzes were examined.